Recently, 780 Canadian in-house attorneys ranked 11 choices as 1 (most important), 2 or 3. I list the choices below followed by the percentage of the respondents who ranked it as one of those three, from In-House Corporate Counsel Barometer 2006, Canadian Corp. Counsel Assoc. at 8:
“Establishing/maintaining a relationship with senior management” (48)
“Keeping an eye on developments in the law” (61)
“Regulatory compliance” (42)
“Corporate governance” (38)
“Litigation exposure” (32)
“Law department management” (24)
“Law department budget” (19)
“Finding and retaining superior staff” (21)
“E-commerce” (5)
“Responding to client needs” (2)
“Other” (1)
The high value on pleasing senior management, as compared to the woeful two percent for “responding to client needs,” suggests that many respondents are solo lawyers who deal mostly with senior executives. To separate “law department management” and “law department budget” seems odd, but the difference is understandable. What is glaringly absent from this list is something like “Learning more about the business and its industry.”