My jaws clench when I hear the term “thought leadership.” Promiscuous, the term makes me think of grandiose, otiose and comatose. Grandiose because we all stand on the shoulders of giants, everything has been thought of or said before, and modesty goes a long way. Otiose because thought leadership conveys…
Enlightenment thinkers understood that knowledge only brings benefits if it enables useful change and if those who can bring about the changes can learn of it. Access to knowledge counts for as much as creation for without the means to find out, lest the candle flicker under the bushel. Akin…
Seven weeks from its start, 142 law departments have submitted data for the 2011 General Counsel Metrics global benchmark survey. Of them, 76 completed the question regarding their matter management system. Astoundingly, they mentioned 30 different systems! Part of that multiplicity comes from the global participation: 87 US companies, 19…
Poring over a compliance function survey now underway by PricewaterhouseCoopers and Compliance Week, I noted that they ask for the number of employees in the function and gave nine ranges to choose: 1, 2, 3-5, 6-10, up to “more than 400.” While ranges may make it easier for respondents to…
A friend sent me word of a compliance function survey being conducted jointly by PricewaterhouseCoopers and Compliance Week. One question asks “To what extent is your compliance function directly responsible for or involved in the following areas?” It then asks for each area about whether the compliance team is “directly…
A recent article in Corporate Counsel discusses administrators of law departments. The author notes that the Association of Legal Administrators (ALA) just added its 10,000th member, but that only two percent of them work for companies. A decade ago, if I recall correctly from speaking before the Corporate/Government Section of…
Many surveys of law departments ask questions to be answered on a scale, such as “How satisfied are you with the technology used by your primary law firms?” The scale goes from 1 (“not very satisfied”) to 2 (“reasonably satisfied” to 3 (“very satisfied”). Most of us don’t think twice…
For every hour today’s in-house lawyer works, productivity far exceeds what was possible as recently as 20 years ago. That’s a broad claim for a tiny post, but let me draw on economic history, inspired by Deirdre N. McCloskey, Bourgeois Dignity: Why Economics Can’t Explain the Modern World (Univ. Chic.…
Capable professionals achieve more and are more contented if their work constraints are more like boundaries than bureaucracy. If simple rules, constitutional principles, broad descriptions of authority accompanied by inspiring goals, set the direction and structure, in-house lawyers and their teammates can cope with the unpredictable challenges of a law…
Sociologists often invoke a “sharp distinction between rural Gemeinschaft (inherited, emotional community) and urban Gesellschaft (created, cold society).” Deirdre N. McCloskey, Bourgeois Dignity: Why Economics Can’t Explain the Modern World (Univ. Chic. 2010) at 17, wrote that. She discredits it as a falso historical and societal split fabricated by German…