The emigration happens infrequently and I have always thought it was a result of client poaching. Put more politely, a client likes a lawyer’s background and abilities and persuades the lawyer to move over and take on a business role. The lawyer presumably welcomes the change of seat. The general…
An equation known as a progress curve “describes how productivity improves in a range of human activities from manufacturing to cancer surgery.” Having read that brief enticement in the Economist, April 2, 2011 at 76, I tried, probably unsuccessfully, to apply the equation to law departments. The formidable equation Tn…
It must be that legal work done in-house has steadily moved up the value curve much like the work done by outside counsel has elevated (See my post of March 11, 2011: huge productivity increases, plus quality.). By “value curve” I mean the importance of the work done for the…
A technique developed in the 1990s by Professor Ben Shneiderman at the University of Maryland has come to be known as tree-mapping. As explained in the NY Times, April 3, 2011 at BU3, tree-mapping “uses interlocking rectangles to represent complicated data sets. The rectangles are sized and colored to convey…
Data visualization software for legal departments will someday go beyond the static presentation of data graphics. My earlier posts covered much of that basic level (See my post of May 7, 2008: methods to portray data with 9 references; 22 cited in one.). Even slightly more elaborate graphics unnerve many…
It is a red-letter day for me when someone publishes a book on law department management. So, I celebrate by quoting from promotional material I just ran across from the International In-House Counsel Journal (IICJ). The book is 160 pages, it costs $200 and I believe quite a bit of…
Henry Kissinger reviewed a biography of Bismarck in the NY Times Book Rev., April 3, 2011 at 10. He praises the Chancellor’s exquisite use of power and remarks more generally: “Power, to be useful, must be understood by its components, including its limits.” That sentence provoked me to think about…
The General Counsel of Nationwide Building Society, the UK’s largest building society (the US equivalent of a savings and loan), believes in measurements and feedback. Liz Kelly encourages here team members to “circulate e-feedback foms across the business seeking view on the quality of their service.” That sort of client…
A knowledge-based theory for legal departments, and its link to transaction cost economics “According to the knowledge-based theory of the firm, the raison d’être of firms is to generate, combine, recombine, and exploit knowledge.” This quote comes from the Acad. Mgt. J., Dec. 2001 at 1212. Further, “whether a firm…
I’m not trying to be silly or too clever. The heading of this post, borrowed from a phrase that has been applied to finance, conveys the proper notion that: in-house lawyers are more likely to be lubricants than propellants. They enable business to succeed, but they don’t drive the strategic…