A staff function, sometimes pervasively involved with a general counsel for its services and often crucially dependent on legal support, is Human Resources (See my post Jan. 23, 2006: training HR staff about legal issues; and May 10, 2006: most legal departments support HR functions.).
For its part, HR personnel watch out for the legal department’s needs (See my post of ; Nov. 8, 2005: contributions of HR representatives assigned to legal departments; July 27, 2007: analysis of offers extended and accepted; Sept. 16, 2008: internal recruiters; May 3, 2007: resistance to search firms; Aug. 24, 2005: exit interviews; March 3, 2006: job positions at John Deere; Dec. 2, 2007: posted open positions at TimeWarnerCable; and April 26, 2006: Internal Labor Market analysis.).
As a sibling to, HR wields considerable clout within a company (See my post of March 26, 2006: powerful staff functions like HR; and Dec. 7, 2005: HR supports law and law supports HR.), even serving sometimes as an internal benchmark comparator (See my post of April 9, 2005: finance, IT and HR benchmarks; and April 6, 2008: benchmark staff functions against each other.). Every now and then, the top lawyer moves to the HR group (See my post of Sept. 27, 2008 #2: Sears GC becomes head of HR; and Jan. 25, 2007: UPS GC becomes head of HR.).
Several topics related to Human Resources are treated elsewhere, such as annual evaluations, headhunters and very talented employees (See my post of Sept. 21, 2008: annual reviews with 12 references; Sept. 16, 2008: search firms with 12 references; and July 29, 2007: high potentials with 10 references.).