Deloitte & Touche’s “Forensic Corporate Counsel Survey 2010: do today’s corporate counsel hold all the cards?” asked a question of its respondents about the number of “non-legal” roles the top lawyer holds. They found that during the past five years, “the number of non-legal roles held by a GC in…
Leaders League 2010 Intelligence Report at 73 tells about the efforts by Pernod Ricard’s law department to discipline the company’s use of domain names and enforce their rights as to others. In 2008 they conducted a global audit of their domain names. “We wrote our own rules designed to correct…
General counsel, especially, as well as other managers should never use the parental put-down: “Because I told you so.” David Deutsch, The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations that Transform the World (Viking 2011) attacks throughout what he calls bad philosophy, bad explanations. One form is the peremptory end-of-discussion just quoted (at…
I thought it would be interesting to ask senior leaders in the cottage industry(thus, Cottage Industrialists) that serves legal departments – other than law firms – to describe the early history of their company, offer some metrics about it today, and give a specific example from a client about some…
This past Spring, BottomLine Technologies acquired Allegient Systems for about $48 million. The purchase significantly increased Bottomline’s position as a leader in the legal invoice automation market, particularly for insurance and other corporate claims functions. BottomLine, a publicly traded company, says on its website that it handles invoices for well…
General Counsel Metrics asked on its benchmark survey “What matter management system do you use?” Of the 190 other law departments so far that indicated either “none” or “n/a,” it seems that a “none” means what it says, however, “n/a” could mean there is a package but the person does…
This blog has cited at least four German law departments, and refered elsewhere to Germany several times. A huge amount of managerial creativity and practicality in that economic powerhouse has gone uncovered, therefore, which I wish were not the case. Send me news about German law departments (See my post…
Ironic, isn’t it, that this blogger, who tries hard to write clearly, admits to the impossibility of writing completely clearly. “[W]e habitually underestimate the difficulty of communication,” writes David Deutsch in The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations that Transform the World (Viking 2011) at 254. “It is impossible to speak in…
Two of the in-house lawyers profiled in the Columbia L. School Mag., Summer 2011 at 28, singled out the explosion of intellectual property issues. You could say that being a lawyer for Warner Music Group and the Jacksonville Jaguars football team would obviously entail extensive intellectual property rights. True, but…
An article packed with sound advice gracefully written cautions in-house lawyers to call meetings with their clients judiciously. Writing in ACC Docket, Nov. 2010 at 82, the authors urge you to have a clear purpose “and not be overly long (you should generally not schedule a meeting longer than 30…