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The nine posts of February 2011 (it was a short month) that addressed the deepest topics

Will there someday soon be an app cottage industry for matter management systems? (Feb. 1, 2011)

Vendors, law firms, user groups or collectives of departments might fund the development of apps.

If the costs of lawyers have risen have risen at the same rate as other artisan-type professional services, where’s the beef? (Feb. 4, 2011)

High-touch care and expertise comes at a cost, a steadily rising cost that exceeds the mundane increases of bread and sundries.

Inherent sex differences do not explain the improving situation of women in the ranks of senior in-house lawyers, talent does (Feb. 4, 2011)

Women lawyers are neurologically very similar to men lawyers. Society shapes us, but not our brain functioning.

Management ideas for general counsel can be expressed in terms of set theory notation (Feb. 7, 2011)

Notational grammars from set theory let us describe and think about concepts tersely and rigorously.

For law departments, first-adopter advantages and disadvantages and the follower’s dilemma (Feb. 10, 2011)

First-mover departments may be as likely to suffer from competitive disadvantages as to obtain competitive advantages

Bizarre, but the largest law firms bring in more revenue than many (most?) of their corporate clients (Feb. 10, 2011)

Quite a few law firms now bring in annual fees greater than $1 billion dollars, whereas about 40 percent of the respondents to the General Counsel Metrics benchmark survey were smaller.

It’s a skewed sample of management practices we draw on — survival bias warps our understanding (Feb. 14, 2011)

We rarely see when others’ management efforts fail; our impressions are biased by successful initiatives (survivors).

Innovation platforms” and matter management systems (Feb. 15, 2011)

Matter management systems and other kinds of software could be platforms where third party developers have access, such as with APIs.

Why not publicly announced cash awards for innovative management practices useful for law departments? (Feb. 21, 2011)

Despite a profusion of honors, no one has put cash on the barrelhead for law department management innovations.