Bet you didn’t analyze the 118 sponsors (as of Sept. 20, 2008 ) for the ACC’s Annual Meeting 2008! I think they tell us what management issues are bubbling. ACC categorizes each vendor, so I have used their 17 categories. Of the sponsorship group, 37 are law firms. I counted…
As I shape a blog post, I spend a moment trying to fit the current item into the grander scheme of things. I am convinced that every idea about how to operate a law department hovers loosely in a multi-dimensional cluster of related ideas. Having accumulated and organized my posts…
Economics offers general counsel and other managers in law departments many concepts that collectively have great explanatory firepower: I have listed below alphabetically 32 important terms drawn from economics and my posts that introduced them, applied them, or referred to them. Feb. 1, 2006: auctions; July 11, 2008: autarky; Sept.…
This blogger also has a voice! I invite you to join me in a series of down-to-earthy, nitty-gritty seminars, much like what I try to make of this blog. Corporate Counsel and I introduce “Operational Effectiveness: How-To’s for In-House Law Departments,” monthly webinars custom designed for general counsel and managing…
A two-page, undated handout from CPA describes Microsoft’s use of that company’s people and facilities in India for a variety of IP services. The services include patent proofreading, prior art searching, and docketing. Marty Shively, Associate General Counsel and Director of Worldwide IP Operations states that “This fiscal year [2007…
Ideas for this blog come from everywhere, but some sources turn up thoughts much more commonly than other do (See my post of Nov. 13, 2007: publications I cite regularly.). One of my troves is the series from K&L Gates (formerly Kirkpatrick & Lockhart Nicholson Graham) where they publish relatively…
Fascinated as I am with vocabulary, I relished this paragraph. It comes from a book by Laurance Urdang, a word-lover who died recently and was eulogized in the NY Times, Aug. 26, 2008 at C10 (See my post of Aug. 12, 2008: unusual vocabulary on this blog.). “This is not…
John Rawls, one of the foremost American philosophers, urges us to think about justice from a standpoint he calls the original position. As explained in Susan Neiman’s Moral Clarity: A Guide for Grownup Idealists (Harcourt 2008) at 212, the original position asks you, “How would you design a society if…
Here is an example of how to use a survey of the law department. Boehringer Ingelheim began its pro bono program more than five years ago. Since the start of the program, approximately 30 percent of the legal department has participated. A piece in Met. Corp. Counsel, Vol. 16, Aug.…
More than 80 legal process outsourcing (LPO) vendors competed for recognition in this year’s Black Book Survey, according to Met. Corp. Counsel, Vol. 16, Aug. 2008 at 34. I have not seen the survey, but from the short announcement in the magazine, it arrays top-ten lists in a number of…