KMWorld, May 2011 at S4, gives the background of Devin Krugly, currently at AccessData. In the squib it says that he came from Exxon Mobil and “a three-year effort to grow an in-house e-discovery team …” That project included “a year-long process to evaluate potential vendors which led to 24…
Practical Law, May 2011 at 80, interviews Michael Fricklas, the General Counsel of Viacom. Several points pertinent to law department operations come from that interview. Most strikingly, the $13.5 billion entertainment company has “approximately 240” lawyers. At nearly 20 lawyers for every billion dollars of revenue, Viacom would top the…
At the obvious level, they are right. Every person being unique, every law department, a fortiori, is unique. That no-argument point accepted, the felt differences have much less consequence when you look at a department in terms of its processes, structure, culture, software, and other attributes. Then the department shares…
Guest blogger Jeff Kaplan of Kaplan & Walker LLP writes: A recently launched benchmarking survey (prepared by Dick Cassin of the FCPA Blog, my partner Rebecca Walker and me) asks respondents to indicate whether the general counsel is the senior official who has been designated to oversee their companies’ anti-corruption…
On her blog, At The Intersection, Pamela H. Woldow writes about such topics as general counsel, legal project management, alternative fee arrangements and what she perceives to be the rising tide of change. A former in-house lawyer turned consultant, Woldow addresses topics of interest both to law firms and law…
Social scientists have long recognized that most of us just naturally believe that the people around us look at the world as we do and behave as we would. We take for granted that we are normal and others travel to the beat of the our drum. This assumption academics…
“Decision-makers can digest only so much information, and only so fast; still, executives tend to request much more information than they actually use.” This observation from MIT Sloan Mgt. Rev., Spring 2011 at 57, resonated with me. It is so easy to send minions to mine data. As they say,…
Hard on its explanation of “good failures,” an article in the Harvard Bus. Rev., April 2011 at 54, summarizes why organizations struggle to analyze failure constructively and learn from it. One reason is “because examining our failures in depth is emotionally unpleasant and can chip away at our self-esteem.” From…
Nine reasons for “failure” are listed in the Harvard Bus. Rev., April 2011 at 50, and three of them are commendable. This seeming paradox has strong significance for managers of in-house lawyers. We can praise failure if someone deliberately and thoughtfully tried something new and it didn’t succeed (referred to…
A general counsel faced with twenty candidates for an open position, or two dozen firms of which one can be retained, might despair at the time drain. Do you have to see them all or is there a golden number? Cheer up! Mathematicians have figured out how many you should…