Decision styles: public and private. Research shows that “managers make decisions differently in public settings, where they know they are being observed, than they do in private settings, where there is no need to explain or justify the process,” Harvard Bus. Rev., Vol. 84, Feb. 2006 at 113 (See my posts of March 18, 2005 on intuition and decisions, Sept. 10, 2005 on mental models and decisions, and Dec. 22, 2005 on reference classes.).
Law firm litigation support. Hunton & Williams has 17 offices for its Richmond, Va.-based firm, with a litigation support center for helping its lawyers with their caseloads. A 10,000-square-foot facility with between 35 and 40 staffers who handle complicated tasks, the challenge increasingly has meant collecting, sorting and analyzing electronic evidence.
(See my post of Oct. 21, 2005 on Faegre & Benson’s similar facility.)
Networks of law firms. Another one came to light: CMS, the alliance of European law firms operating in 42 business centers around the world. Its firms have over 550 partners, more than 1,900 legal and tax advisors and over 3,700 total employees. (Source: marketing material of LawPort web technology at LegalTech, Jan. 2005) (See my post of Nov. 11, 2005 and skepticism on whether departments rely on such groups and my post of Dec. 19, 2005 collecting metrics on several other networks.).