As posted previously, in-house counsel engage in various processes (See my post of April 27, 2006 on the term “processes.”). For all processes – think illustratively of contract review or preparation of responses to EEOC charges – lawyers develop methods and materials that help them accomplish the processes – think…
Spell-checkers and redlining merged into word processing; electronic billing merged into matter management; graphics capabilities merged into spreadsheets. Likewise, software that serves the needs of a corporate secretary function will over time merge with software that helps Board members communicate (See my post of July 19, 2006 on Board software.).…
Legal Week, Vol. 8, June 8, 2006, at 12 reports that David Hickson, former “head of legal” at Lastminute.com (See my post of March 22, 2006 that differentiates “general counsel” and “chief legal officer.”) has become a consultant at niche firm The Legal Desk. The Legal Desk is one of…
An excellent piece by Michael Kaminski, a partner at Foley & Lardner, describes patent metrics (See my post of July 8, 2006 that describes the paper.). His first metric is not a quantitative measure, but rather a “way to judge whether the patent department is conducting its businesses the way…
To opine credibly and scientifically on the degree to which law department practices bring benefits, such as assessment of cases within 60 days of the complaint being filed, someone would have to follow the disciplines of scientific experiment. Take 100 random law departments and require them to follow the ECA…
It all sounds so smooth as the vendors croon, but the reality of a law department getting electronic bills from its law firms is fractious. Law firms that want to submit electronic bills have different time and billing system and different accounting or technology staff. They need to understand the…
Earlier I criticized requests for proposals (See my post of July 18, 2006.), without making mention of the older sibling, requests for information (RFI). An RFI precedes an RFP and typically confirms basic information about a herd of vendors and their offerings. Law departments that have a large group of…
Firms that specialize in recovering payments from class action defendants on behalf of claimants or, in their stead, as assignees have created a small niche. According to an interesting article in Corp. Counsel, June 2006 at A7 (James Morsch), such firms either offer to handle the claims filing in return…
The earliest economists, such as Adam Smith, David Ricardo and John Stuart Mill, wrote in natural language and used narrative to describe what they understood. Most of what we now understand about how law departments operate comes in narrative discourse. We read someone’s armchair ideas about good management and wade…
One of the best furnished rooms in the cottage of law department vendors contains the companies that license law departments their matter management systems. Once the domain of CompInfo, Inslaw and custom software, the field now has to a number of well-established vendors. Here are some of them and their…