InsideCounsel, May 2007 at 51, chronicles the decline of arbitration in relation to litigation. The magazine cites at page 56 results from an American Arbitration Association (AAA) survey in 2003 of 254 in-house counsel (See my posts of Dec. 14, 2005 for data from that survey on price-earnings ratios; Dec.…
It sounds wonderful and straightforward if we could rank law departments on a bell curve of the number of their management initiatives. Some departments on the left tail of the array do very little to manage themselves; the large group humped in the middle have two or three activities underway…
When economists create a model to describe how an economy, a region, or a company functions, they typically allow for some influences that are outside their model’s scope – so-called exogenous factors. In a like manner, a general counsel can do everything within her powers to run a tight law…
Various posts have referred to the in-house discovery groups and organizations that law departments have created in response to the digital tidal wave and the exigencies of e-discovery (See my posts of Feb. 1, 2006 about Altria; Aug. 26, 2006 #1 about Cendant; Feb. 14, 2007 about Halliburton and the…
A survey and report by PriceWaterhouseCoopers concisely explains (at 6-7) what it describes as the four most important advantages of international arbitration: flexibility of procedure (66 of the 103 online participants selected it), privacy (54 selected it), choice of arbitrators (49 respondents), and enforceability of awards (48). The report then…
McKesson has made available online its “Comprehensive Compliance Program.” The program has seven elements, one of which is a no-cost telephone number for employees to call to report possible violations. As McKesson states it, “McKesson has established a toll-free EthicsLine, available 24-hours a day, 7 days a week, which can…
In October 2006 the 21 members of Marriott Vacation Club International’s law department (MVCI), hosted 80 students from a Florida high school for a day of workshops. The event was part of a MVCI program and partnership with Street Law, Inc. and the Association of Corporate Counsel’s (ACC) Corporate Legal…
I felt I drove beyond my headlights when I included in my list of RFP criteria a law firm’s position on environmental protection (See my post of Feb. 6, 2007.). But the high beams went up when I read about Morrison & Foerster’s IT recycling programs. Anthony Hoke, the thousand-lawyer…
Hard as it may be to identify in a consistent and collectively-agreed upon way the meaning of “management initiatives” (See my post of March 11, 2007 on management initiatives compared to processes.) there is at least some hope that within any particular initiative set, one can describe the variations on…
To supplement some earlier posts that discuss aspects of expert witnesses (See my posts of May 17, 2006 about the industry; Oct. 19, 2005 regarding patent experts; and March 20, 2007 on the cottage industry generally), I have listed some online sites that may be useful. These references came from…