If someone surveys law departments to collect data and publishes findings, they should provide readers with a minimum set of background facts about their methodology. The findings only have credibility to the extent the methodology holds up to scrutiny. Here are some questions they should answer. How many law…
A scatter plot of data, for instance total compensation of a group of lawyers against how many years they have been practicing law, may look like a Milky Way galaxy of points, but much can be learned from the correlation. Even more can be learned if we also know such…
In Exec.Counsel, June/July 2012 at 31, author Mark Klapow of Crowell & Moring discusses intellectual property. At one point he refers to how much companies spend on their internal IP groups. “The average annual budget for the intellectual property departments for large companies, which are typically the most dedicated to…
“Nothing strikes fear into the heart of a corporate general counsel like a call from celebrity attorney Gloria Allred.” That is the over-hyped opening of an article in Bloomberg BusinessWeek, July 23, 2012 at 55. Perhaps. If one’s boss, the CEO, is embroiled in a messy breakup and the wife…
A group of 600 HR managers, academics, and advisers “are drafting guidelines for standardizing measures of workforce diversity, turnover, job training, and the like.” Not only is this massive initiative trying to bring about consistent definitions and data collection methods, it is also trying to outline how companies should report…
In the July issue of Claims Mgt, at 30, there is an advertisement by Bottomline Technologies. In bold print at the top the ad proclaims “Bottomline is chosen three times more than any other legal spend management vendor.” I know executives at the company and to the extent of my…
The vital role played by notaries, particularly in Europe, raised questions for me about the overlap between what lawyers do and what notaries do, and law department management implications. Italy has 5,000 notaries while France has 9,000 of them, and the latter enjoy a monopoly over property conveyancing. Typically, governments…
Another blog by a general counsel. London-based general counsel Brett Farrell returned to an in-house position with an online financial services company in late 2011 after spending two years in private practice with U.K. firm Barlow Robbins. Farrell has only been blogging for a few months, so let’s see how…
In Brazil, half of all businesses are limited liability companies while 45 percent are individual proprietorships. Less than one percent are corporations and of these only about 100 are large companies listed on the Brazilian Stock Exchange. This information comes from Canadian Corporate Counsel Assoc. Mag. (Autumn 2010) at 37. …
This blog has addressed custom software written for a legal department, as well as some of the relative advantages and disadvantages of these two approaches (See my post of June 3, 2009: customized software coded for legal departments with 12 references.). Let’s review the arguments in favor of custom software.…