The consequences of this change to legal departments occurred to me as I read E. Leigh Dance, Bright Ideas: Insights from Legal Luminaries Worldwide (Mill City Press 2009) at 161. Simon Slater of First Counsel expressed this view.
Assume Slater spotted the movement correctly, and further assume that something similar happened around the same time in the United States. After a decade or so, the partners from those firms, more enlightened in ways managerial, move in-house and import their new-found ideas about management. Thereafter, presumably, law departments improved their levels of management. Along with in-house attorneys enhancing their management skills on their own, the importation of experience and a mind-set to run the operation smoothly would certainly complement it.