On Google’s BookSearch on October 26th, the term “law department” turned up 3,260 hits. Many were addresses to graduates of law schools and a wide variety of other cites. The term “legal department” returned a mere 2,550 hits. What interested me as I scanned the pages of results were the…
My long-time friend Eric Little, the founder a number of years ago of one of the most successful document-assembly companies (Analytic Legal Programs), has recently joined the world of blogging. Eric and I got back to the early days of Wynn Smith and others in the ABA Law Practice Management…
Law Firm Inc., Vol. 5, Sept. 2007 at 43, lists 29 vendors (software packages) cited by 115 of the Am Law 200’s technology executives. The respondents could list more than one provider used by their firm. The relevance of the following list to law departments is that they may want…
Sometimes, law departments who are acting in good faith ask vendors to respond to a request for proposal. For example, a law department might think that it could be advantageous to offshore some service. When the proposals come back and the law department thinks further about logistics and economics, its…
I am constantly dismayed at how many articles and presentations about managing law departments repeat what has previously been written about ad nauseum. Hundreds of articles have talked about alternative billing, and they all bemoan hourly billing and describe the usual suspects for replacement. We don’t need to read or…
The Harvard Bus. Rev., Vol. 85, Sept. 2007 at 18, describes a technique whereby a law department’s managers, about to start an implementation of e-billing, a total revamping of the records management process, or some other significant project, imagine that the project fails. Yes, fails, and spectacularly. The key step…
Verizon Communications’ law department was recognized by InsideCounsel, Sept, 2007 at 58, for its innovation in the area of e-discovery. The law department created a 36-page guide that has 16 chapters. According to the article, the lead attorney for the project estimates that he took about 160 hours to assemble…
My post of June 18, 2007, in which I wrote about the impossibility of calculating an ROI for knowledge management projects, elicited a long comment from Dr. Dan Kirsch, CKM, MKMP, CKMI COO & Board Member Knowledge Management Professional Society (KMPro). I have shortened his remarks just a bit, but…
At a recent PLI conference, the formal general counsel of Tyco International, Bill Lytton, spoke about corporate compliance and an “ethic of integrity.” He suggested that law departments that are of some size allow everyone in the department to complete an assessment of the ethics of their superiors. This 180-degree…
An online poll by a leading trade journal, InsideCounsel, Sept. 2007 at 13, asked its readers “Have you ever used Six Sigma to better manage your department?” The brief item does not state how many people responded, but does say that 18 percent answered “yes,” 55 percent answered “no,” and…