Diversity & The Bar, Jan./Feb. 2012 at 47, provides data from 390 companies regarding the percentage of men and women lawyers who are direct reports to the general counsel. Those companies had 2,330 direct reports. (By the way, that works out to almost exactly six direct reports per general counsel.)…
Of a group of respondents to the ALM Legal Intelligence survey last year, 75 answered a question regarding whether they had “contracted during the last fiscal year with any legal service providers (or vendors) to provide outsourced services.” Of them, 48 said “no” they had not and 23 said “yes.”…
An article in Paradigm, Winter 2012 at 24, by Clayton Wire clayton.wire@starrslaw.com lays out five things companies should consider to lessen the likelihood that they will need to resort to a malpractice claim. Companies, he writes, “should never proceed forward with representation by outside counsel without a written fee agreement.”…
The NY Times, Feb. 26, 2012, at BU4, wrote about a part of the brain called the Brodmann area 10. “This region of the frontal cortex is believed to be associated with our ability to make inferences about others’ preferences and beliefs based on their actions.” I take that to…
The most recent report by Profit & Law, Helene Trink’s consultancy in France, covers 119 heads of legal (directeurs juridiques) in France. Approximately 60% of them are in charge of the corporate secretarial function (Secrétariat du Conseil) and a similar percentage lead compliance and ethics (Conformité/Ethique). The least common area…
From time to time this blog mentions where several law departments have banded together to push an initiative. I refer to them as collective actions and praise them. Progress would be made on several management fronts if fellow-traveler departments more often combined their resources. To be helpful, I wrote an…
Office locations of in-house lawyers spring up alongside business units and executives. As the latter go global, so will their counselors. One management challenge arises from those foreign locations that this blog has discussed: the absence of attorney-client privilege (See my post of Feb. 16, 2008: attorney-client privilege with 18…
Billing rates (See my post of Jan. 23, 2012: with 8 references.). Chief legal officer title compared to GC (See my post of Jan. 20, 2012: CLO vs GC with 26 references.). Client satisfaction II (See my post of Jan. 25, 2012: with 10 references.). Compensation of in-house lawyers ex…
A recent announcement described a capability that I hadn’t heard about. Handshake Software, a provider of SharePoint-based intranets, extranets, search, document and mail management, and Vizit, a provider of content visualization and social collaboration software for SharePoint, announced a technology alliance. It was what Vizit brings to the alliance that…
What makes estimations of return on investment intractable is the inherent reliance on unreliable assumptions. All ROI “calculations” depend on givens: “Lawyers spend at least 10 minutes a day looking for documents,” “Paralegals costs us about $25 an hour,” “We prepare more than 30 placement agreements a quarter,” or “Approximately…