During my consulting career I have known only one calculation of “weighted average” (See my posts of Nov. 30, 2005 with my definition and an example; and Feb. 20, 2006 with an example from litigation.). I presumed you add up all of one figure from a set of law departments…
Cybersettle, Inc. offers an online dispute resolution service whereby parties to a lawsuit (or dispute) can use the software as a neutral tool to help them reach agreement. Here is another technology for law departments as well as another cottage industry serving law departments (See my post of July 21,…
McKinsey research, published in the McKinsey Quarterly, 2006, No. 3 at 65, reaches three main conclusions. The first is that “executives should eschew simplistic organizational solutions: when applied in isolation by the companies in our database, popular techniques such as management incentives and key performance indicators (KPIs) were strikingly ineffective.”…
The most commonly-used reports of data captured by matter management software are those that come with the software, the so-called “canned reports.” Robust packages have 15 to 20 such pre-formated reports. Many law departments supplement those standard reports with a second capability, that of a third-party report writer such as…
Every practice of a law department falls somewhere on a spectrum of related activities (See my post of Nov. 26, 2006 that explains this continuum notion.). It is also evident that each practice has its proponents and its opponents. Because of disagreements over values, the complexity of the social system…
Economists believe there are causal links between the institutions of a country and its prosperity. Institutions – organizations, formal laws and unwritten rules that govern a country – function better in rich countries than in impoverished ones. But it might be that wealth breeds stronger institutions, a reverse causality. To…
Once a white hot growth area, back in the early 1990’s, bill auditing cooled off considerably, and some auditors shifted out of that line of work. Even so, quite a few remain, and they are veterans. Those named below have been or are involved in the bill review sub-industry. Accountability…
By spectrum I mean a range of approaches from one extreme to another along a continuum. One such spectrum is how a legal department processes law firm invoices. Extant today is a range that shifts gradually from no review at all because invoices go straight from firms to accounts payable,…
A “meme” has been defined as “an information pattern, held in an individual’s memory or in an outside artifact (e.g., book, record or tool), which is likely to be communicated or copied to another individual’s memory.” Examples of memes that pertain to law departments are ideas (partnering), technologies (docketing software),…
No general counsel is an island. Each general counsel is connected to and relies on heads of other support groups, and those peer groups have a say in many law department initiatives. If you want to choose a document management system, you must come to terms with Information Systems and…