In the view of Jordan Furlong 30 months ago, for three reasons general counsel balk at making major changes against law firms (See my post of Feb. 19, 2009: seven reasons why law departments do not take dramatic action.) General counsel are under-incentivized. This catch-all explanation adds nothing – the…
If there were an accepted rate to convert the number of a law departments paralegals to lawyer equivalents, such as three paralegals will be deemed to equal one lawyer, and similarly to convert support staff to lawyer equivalents, what would that conversion tell us as a benchmark? First, though, although…
The law departments of large and acclaimed companies sit square in the targets of most benchmark surveys. Perhaps we should call them the Unfortunate 500, deluged as they are with requests for benchmark participation. All survey sponsors want name brand respondents. Bigger is better; better known is better. Particularly when…
Teams = praise. We extol teams constantly, but we may not have objective evidence to support that widespread belief. When a group of people work together on a project, many times they succeed better than if individuals members went ahead on their own. Other times, however, teams falter for various…
Having scoured my posts for lists of six and seven, I conclude this obsession with my lists of eight. The first three years produced 10 of them (See my post of July 14, 2005: 8 methods to train clients; Jan. 17, 2006: Ethics Officer Association (EOA) and 8 global standards;…
The National Law Journal, in its June 11th issue, published my article on four developments that will enhance benchmark reports in the near future. This article won the BigLaw Pick of the Week in the July 26, 2011 issue. BigLaw is a free weekly email newsletter that provides helpful information…
The law department looks to reduce its budget or headcount by shifting some tasks back to clients, such as minor contracts, administrative help (terminate a secretary in a remote office and have the lawyer there double up on a business unit secretary), review of some marketing material, IT support, etc.).…
Cargill (See my post of Aug. 9, 2011: Cargill with 7 references.). Drivers of legal investment, company attributes, influences on law department size (See my post of Aug. 15, 2011: what defines companies better than industry with 11 references and 2 metas.). Intel (See my post of July 30, 2011:…
Modernism is out of date in terms of today’s law department design A fad in the mid-20th century for rational design by an omniscient planner, as evidenced by Le Corbusier’s view that “a house is a machine for living in” and the elaborately laid-out but sterile cities of Canberra and…
The teleological fallacy improperly infers causes from outcomes. A good or bad outcome of an initiative by a general counsel does not derive, necessarily, from a good or bad cause, be it an idea, design or implementation. A loss at trial doesn’t mean the legal work done was shoddy. A…