One of the most profound conclusions I drew from Boris Groysberg, Chasing Stars: The Myth of Talent and the Portability of Performance (Princeton Univ. 2010) concerns the ageless debate: should a law department base retentions on the law firm or the individual partner. The iconic strip serves as a useful…
Change comes so hard between a law department and a law firm because they have to be in reasonable synch. Their respective champions of change need to be in roughly the same psychological space. Imagine two bell curves of willingness to embrace change, one for law departments and one for…
When a British newspaper obtained an enormous pile of receipts from politicians who might have filed bogus personal expenses, it put them online and invited the public to help spot abuses. A clever app let anyone look at a receipt and flag it as dodgy. The paper honored those with…
“Everything in moderation” echoes Greek philosophy but for law departments, even mothers’ milk curdles if overdone. Consider several assuredly good things that turn bad if overdone. Law departments want excellent client satisfaction ratings, but if they rise too high something is amiss. If lawyers never rein in clients, what good…
I will be speaking at Interact, the conference organized each year by Mitratech for law departments. My panel will include Verona Dorch, AGC at Harsco Corporation, and Kim Rivera, GC of DaVita, Inc. Interact 2011: The Legal & Compliance Technology Forum, will take place Sun, May 15 to Wed, May…
It is quite conceivable that lawyers in a law department can estimate how promptly a client called them on a new matter. When a matter first becomes recognized, the responsible lawyer could give it a number that reflects how timely the lawyer was brought in. A scale would suffice from…
Mark Harris, the CEO of Axiom, referred to a surprising finding from one of his company’s projects. Speaking at Georgetown University’s Center for the Study of the Legal Profession conference on March 9th, Harris referred to long-term contracts and their “revenue leakage.” One company, he said, spent more than $100…
As if Rich Baer, Qwest’s energetic and outspoken General Counsel, were not busy enough, he has seized the keyboard and joined the fray as a blogger. Please welcome Baer to blogdom and take a look at his Reliance on Counsel. I like the first several posts, especially his self-effacing observations…
A piece in the London Rev. of Books, March 3, 2011 at 11, wrestles with the claim of a recent book that over-use of the Internet robs us of intelligence, happiness, memory, and creativity. The reviewer disagrees regarding all but creativity. My reduction of his discussion goes toward mini-Internets: knowledge…
“We know that creative genius is not the same thing as intelligence.” The quote comes from a book review in the London Rev. of Books, March 3, 2011 at 11. Like idiot savants know a huge amount about a small area of knowledge, creative types may be hopeless intellectually outside…