Attorney-client privilege may soon apply to in-house lawyers in France. As reported in the European Lawyer, Issue 92, Jan. 2010 at 21, the Rapport Darrois proposes to allow lawyers who go in-house to remain as members of their local bar, and thus afford their clients the protection of the attorney-client privilege. If that change comes about, a similar shift might spread throughout the European countries that deny them the privilege (See my post of Feb. 16, 2008: attorney-client privilege with 18 references.).
Mushroom-like growth of LPOs in India. A post two months ago referred to estimates of more than 100 legal process outsourcing providers in India in 2009 (See my post of Dec. 1, 2009: refers also to an organization formed by such providers with more than 80 members.). An article in the European Lawyer, Issue 92, Jan. 2010 at 37, states that in the Gurgaon area alone there were in 2008 more than 180 LPOs.
A challenging integration of a legal department in Russia. An article about Stephen Polakoff, general counsel to the Russian oil giant Integra Group, includes comments about eye-opening decentralization. Polakoff explains that “initially the legal department was quite large because we had more than 80 legal entities … when I joined in February 2007. Each of these acquired entities came with its own lawyers, accountants and corporate culture …” Unfortunately, the European Lawyer, Issue 92, Jan. 2010 at 16, tells us nothing about the number of lawyers in the department now. Somehow I doubt the number is near 80.
Annual increase in daily page views on this blog. On a lark, the kind of quirky thing only a metrics junkie would do, I downloaded from TypePad the page views of all the days of this blog between January 1, 2009 and January 26, 2010. Quick as a flash, into a scattergram in Excel bedecked with a linear trend line, and out popped the equation: y = 0.2703x – 10363. Taking the first day as 39,814 and the last as 40,204 (assigned by Excel), the equation tells me the increase over the year was from 399 page views per day to 503, a healthy increase of 26%. Pretty gaudy, huh? Fun to dance the math fantastic! According to Website Outlook,this blog is worth $3,124 based on 760 daily page views and ad revenue of $4.28. I won’t give up my day job.