Distinctions among law departments by market value? ISS, the rating agency, has announced that it will judge companies against a peer group of 14 to 24 companies, based on industry, revenue and market value. It is unclear to me how the market value of a company has an effect on…
Looking in on my Twitter account, I was surprised to learn how many people are following me (@reesmorrison): 650. Back in late January of 2011, I wrote that 344 were doing so at that time, so something like one a day have seen fit to connect. The group has lots…
Here is a classic example of the distorted benchmarks produced by from some small companies. The Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC) manages the GMAT test taken worldwide for admission to business schools. The current general counsel joined ten years ago as the only lawyer for the non-profit’s 34 employees. Today,…
Talent is so hard to find, recruit and keep that when one of your strong performers announces that they are departing to lead another law department, do you feel good for them or do you gnash your teeth? Deep down you realize that ambitious, capable lawyers won’t want to wait…
Sometimes it is difficult for a general counsel to get objective feedback about personal performance. One source, tipped by an article in the ACC Docket, March 2012 at 69, could be the search firm that placed you. The source may strike you as strange, but if that firm has good…
Promoting a lawyer from within has the advantage of letting you promote or reassign others at the same time. Like adding a chair to the musical game, you create choices regarding other members of your department. If you bring in someone from outside to fill a vacated slot, no one…
“Unlike other departments that have specific deliverables unique to that department, the legal department’s ‘deliverable’ is to advocate on behalf of and address the issues of other departments.” With this puzzling assertion in the ACC Docket, March 2012 at 35, perhaps the author means that IT has sole responsibility to…
“We propose that a successful legal department is one in which the quality of the legal services delivered is unparalleled, the feeling of job satisfaction by members of the legal department is high, and the legal department as a whole is regarded as a partner in achieving the corporate goals…
An earlier post gave average in-house cash compensation for the five highest-paid practice areas: M&A, Antitrust, International, Intellectual Property – Licensing, and Tax (See my post of April 16, 2012: survey reports averages from $289,000 down.). That post focused on the relationship between cash compensation and the fully loaded costs…
In Met. Corp. Counsel, March 2012 at 16, an FTI consultant mike.kinnaman@fticonsulting.com shares some findings from FTI’s interviews last fall with 31 in-house counsel. The topic was e-discovery and the participants were primarily from huge U.S. companies. He writes, “In spite of greater emphasis and attention on e-discovery, corporations still…