Legal agreements put off clients because they are dense, inter-connected, and one dimensional, in the sense that they are dense, linear text. Were there tools to show the provisions of an agreement visually, both clients and lawyers would gain. This blog has foreshadowed this idea but never explicitly proposed the…
Managers in legal departments will do better to the degree they apply the lessons from these related disciplines. Art Markman, Smart Thinking: three essential keys to solve problems, innovate and get things done (Perigree 2012) brings out differences between psychology and cognitive science. As he describes the two fields, psychologists…
Profit & Law, Helene Trink’s consultancy in France, recently published its survey report of 119 heads of legal (directeurs juridiques) in France. Of that group, 62 provided enough data to permit Trink to calculate their total legal budget, covering both internal and external costs, as a percentage of their 2010…
“Path dependence” describes situations in a law department where “a decision made early on for one reason … influences behavior long after that reason is irrelevant.” Art Markman, Smart Thinking: three essential keys to solve problems, innovate and get things done (Perigree 2012) at 28-29, gives the example of the…
Those who manage in-house lawyers sometimes interchange the terms “talent” and “skill.” They have, however, different meanings and it is our loss to blur them. “Talent” concerns innate abilities, along the lines of a melodious voice, athleticism, humor, intelligence, and spatial sensibility. Bestowed at birth, perhaps genetically programmed, plastic under…
Writing in the ACC Docket, Jan./Feb. 2012 at 18, Ron Pol discusses some of the financial and ethical pitfalls of fixed fees. He cites the frustrated managing partner of a major law firm: “In-house counsel often seek alternatives to hourly rates, then demand hours and rate information as well, forcing…
The Economist, Dec. 17, 2011 at 116, discusses the well-worn arguments regarding relative innovativeness between bigger and smaller companies. The editorial adds two points: (1) larger companies excel more at incremental improvements than radical change and (2) the growth rates of companies correlate more with innovation than do their size.…
Last year’s ALM survey asked about 14 functional areas and whether the chief legal officer supervised it or some other executive did. Unsurprisingly, for more than two out of three respondents, the top lawyer was by a large margin responsible for Compliance, Corporate Secretary, Patents, and Trademarks. On the other…
At a fundamental level, the output of a legal department, both quality and quantity, depends on how diligently its members work. Ability counts, hugely, but sheer doggedness and concentration goes a very long way. So, when I read in the NY Times, Feb. 26, 2012 at BU8, about “research showing…
Some 70 law departments that provided data to an ALM survey last year responded to a question about e-billing. Of them, 18 said they use an electronic billing program. The question did not differentiate between matter management and e-billing software, which often is the same these days. For that subset,…