In 2003, the law department of Reuters, slashed by cost cutting, made redundant 20 percent of the legal staff. Legal Week, Nov. 3, 2005, at 78 The general counsel, Rosemary Martin, “took creative steps to keep up morale and stem any further exits.” For example, she increased secondments to other countries, as well as to external firms. She arranged it so that an attorney who wanted to quit and travel could instead work in Asia.
To send a lawyer from a department shrunk by 20 percent to a law firm sounds perverse, but may be the lawyer(s) kept doing Reuters work. To second a lawyer to a country means, I assume, to send them for a period of time to a foreign location of the law department. Whatever, I commend the creativity of a general counsel who seeks for ways to keep the troops happy. (See my posts of Sept. 21, 2005 on recruiting secondees and May 1, 2005 on morale surveys and April , 2005 on morale boosters, and Oct. 29 and 30, 2005 on other techniques.)