A tour de force on statistics can be found in the ACC Docket, April 2007 at 58. In the context of employment discrimination cases, the authors clearly describe nine advanced statistical calculations and make four recommendations on statistical methodology. Of the calculations, they criticize five of them – chi-square (better…
Several vendors of e-billing systems offer ASP (application specific packages, aka hosted services) that run on servers maintained by the vendor (See my posts of March 26, 2006 and April 26, 2006 for more on this option.). A piece in Met. Corp. Counsel, Vol. 15, Feb. 2007 at 31, mentions…
This blog’s writer cares about whatever aids those who manage corporate legal functions. “Tools” are one category of aids, but the term “tool” turns out to be hard to define (See my posts of Aug. 13, 2006 and April 14, 2005 about tools generally; Oct. 18, 2006 [“The term “tools”…
Simon Lewis of Sinch Software was kind enough to e-mail me with several informative comments about document assembly (See my post of Jan. 28, 2007 on Marc Lauritsen and several packages he describes.). “GhostFill can now be added to the list of non-survivors having been withdrawn from general availability as…
A survey of European law departments, reported in Law Dept. Quarterly, Sept./Nov. 2006 at 27, asked about “quality management systems.” Among the 11 systems given to choose from, one was “a set of key performance indicators” and the other “performance metrics.” Of the 57 law departments that responded, 50 percent…
Most managers think that progress calls for doing something additional – more software, an extra step on a process, a shiny new initiative. But good managers also lop off out-dated or ineffectual practices. Some that my consulting experience has run across include the axe coming down on internal time recording,…
Online sites that provide a variety of information on a given topic are generally thought of as portals. A swarm of portals aim at lawyers, and each of them provides information that has value to inside lawyers. It is far beyond the scope of this blog to evaluate these sites,…
An interesting article in the Fin. Times, Jan. 31, 2007 at 7, explains three key strategies that futurist thinkers employ. First is what the article called “careful examination,” which assumes that the future “is already more or less here, if only we could see it.” Careful thought and observation will…
An excellent tool for managers of law departments is the online survey. Available for free with company-licensed software, or at low cost from vendors such as Snap and Survey Monkey, the software lets you collect responses quickly and easily, and most packages prepare graphical summaries of the results. I have…
In an undated OutINFront piece of ACC Docket at 16, Ron Pol suggests ten steps to a successful offsite, and suggests three interesting ones to help attendees get more value from the gathering. The three points focus on increasing what attendees learn from the conference. The first is to conduct…