I advocate budgets for “major matters” handled by outside counsel. “Major” turns on the amount likely to be spent in some period of time. It doesn’t make sense to require all practice areas in a law department to comply with the same threshold requirement for matter budgets (See my post…
I read about a company’s use of “life-like chatbots” that are “emotionally intelligent and engaging.” According to an ad from eGain Communications in KMWorld, May 2011 at Profiles 7, “The bot chats with customers, providing answers and processing data, and escalates to live agents when needed.” A law department might…
The Corporate Grapevine of the ACC Docket, May 2011 at 142, mentions that Joia Johnson, the chief legal officer of Hanesbrands, has been elected to the Board of Directors of Crawford & Co., an insurance services firm (See my post of March 25, 2009: GC of McDonald’s on board of…
Budget accuracy drops exponentially I suspect; if you double the time period of the budget – maybe from six months to a year – the accuracy plummets to one-fourth as good. For that reason, require budgets only for a quarter or two ahead (See my post of April 27, 2005:…
The other day a wise general counsel pointed out a nuance of reporting lines: his dotted line authority vis-à-vis the lawyers who did not report to him varies in “thickness” according to the subject. As to FCPA measures, with the lawyers who report solid line to a business unit executive,…
A fascinating study looked at collaboration on papers in terms of academics’ physical proximity. Professors and grad students who had offices near each other, it turns out, published papers of higher quality, as determined by subsequent citation counts of their papers. This quantification of proximity’s value appears in the Harvard…
With trepidation I cite an actual case, but the broader point about management of outside counsel encourages me, a lawyer manqué. You can read more in the 2011 supplement to Bob Haig’s Successful Partnering Between Inside and Outside Counsel, Section 9 at 96, about McQueen, Rains & Tresch, LLP v.…
The official bestowal on a general counsel of corporate powers is known in the United States as a “delegation of authority.” The Board of Directors, in theory and often in practice, assigns to the CEO a broad set of powers, and the CEO in turn sub-delegates a portion of those…
The ratio of meeting time to working time (March 10, 2011) The ratio of meeting to non-meeting time and two suggestions to improve the effectiveness of meetings. Early findings from 142 in GCM’s 2011 benchmark survey regarding 30+ matter management systems (March 12, 2011) Of 142 responding law departments, 76…
In late 2005, Sunoco’s litigation was handled by various in-house lawyers who were commercial lawyers dedicated to business units. The general counsel then hired a senior litigation partner from Reed Smith, Marilyn Heffley, to create a centralized litigation group. Heffley started by finding all pending cases and transferring responsibility for…