:
Updated:
COVID-19 and Managing Law Department Members
:
Updated:
Managing talent during Covid — matter management status updates
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Updated:
Utilizing the Human Resources Department for Managing Talent
:
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COVID19 and Talent: Informal emails periodically from the General Counsel
:
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Confidential, anonymous comment box
:
Updated:
COVID19 and Management — Quick Surveys of Department Members
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Updated:
COVID-19 and Management Techniques for GCs — drop-in calls
:
Updated:
COVID-19 Techniques — Status Reports
:
Updated:
Covid-19: Management Techniques (one-on-ones)
:
Updated:
Plots with All CAPITAL LETTER axis labels, locations at the left and top and no title
:
Updated:
Plot with useless grid lines, colors without significance, and curious sort order of bars
:
Updated:
Reproducible research regarding legal management surveys – lessons from pharma
:
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Weighting survey responses so that the findings better represent underlying demographics
:
Updated:
Nything but trivial – the crucial ubiquity of “N = “ in survey findings
:
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Choices on plots that involve flipping axes, using points instead of bars, and axis labels for intervals
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Updated:
Attractive spacing and width of bars on plots; informative labels
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Superfluous elements – chart junk – but two useful additions
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Excessive use of colors in a plot; sorting an axis
:
Updated:
Multiple and superfluous typography used on a plot
:
Updated:
Redundant display of data on plots
:
Updated:
Lawyer Resistance to Seeking Feedback from Their Clients
:
Updated:
Show foreign and domestic participants by level (Feb 23, 2015)
:
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The Importance of Confidentiality in Law Department Client Surveys
:
Updated:
Create a graphic that shows how many participants there were by each level
:
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Law Department Client Satisfaction
:
Updated:
General Counsel of Fortune 500 companies, company revenue and law school rank
:
Updated:
A Shepard’s diagram of the three legal services companies can enlist
:
Updated:
Leveling off of law school rank and number of general counsel of Fortune 500 companies
:
Updated:
Law schools and their graduates who are Fortune 500 GCs, adjusted for enrollment of law school
:
Updated:
Sure, spreadsheet analyses can mislead, but consider the benefits
:
Updated:
To plot cities of law schools or law firms, you need longitude and latitude values
:
Updated:
A choropleth showing the states whose law schools produced Fortune 500 GCs
:
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Fortune 500 general counsel and the ranking of their law school
:
Updated:
Which law schools have graduated the most Fortune 500 general counsel?
:
Updated:
Governments are the best sources of data
:
Updated:
One of the Ten Commandments of programmers working with data: record each change you make!
:
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Subsetting and aggregating: two fundamental programming steps for analysts of data
:
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Ideologies trump arguments based on data
:
Updated:
A choropleth of state regulatory burdens on small businesses: lawyers keep busy!
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Updated:
Leading M&A firms and differences in the average size of the deals they have recently worked on
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Updated:
One way a law department might narrow down the selection of M&A counsel
:
Updated:
If we only had a proxy for the value of a blog post …
:
Updated:
Baumol’s cost disease and why law departments keep paying higher and higher hourly rates
:
Updated:
Sub-topics of blogs after substantive area focus
:
Updated:
Dispersion of branch offices and number of blogs supported by U.S. law firms
:
Updated:
Practice area topics of law firm blogs
:
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Law firms without blogs and whether number of lawyers might be causal
:
Updated:
Law firms, their blogs, and marketing to corporate legal departments
:
Updated:
Beyond ranking law departments on a metric: show differences from average or show scaling
:
Updated:
Give some thought to how you label the text on an axis: data on large law firms
:
Updated:
What is the basis for Bottomline Technologies claim of “3X”?
:
Updated:
Understanding the underlying metrics: an example from search engine results
:
Updated:
Four years of data from US law departments on total legal spending as a percentage of revenue
:
Updated:
The legal industry loses when legal management data stays guarded and proprietary
:
Updated:
If your external spend is high, consider actions other than outside counsel management
:
Updated:
Why it’s almost certainly wrong to claim that law firm costs “are rising exponentially”
:
Updated:
For lawyers, the importance of “using data to make decisions”
:
Updated:
Graphics and the choice of axis lines
:
Updated:
Poisson analysis can tell us how much data to review to be confident in our findings
:
Updated:
Web-scraping for data and the power of Application Program Interfaces (APIs)
:
Updated:
Benchmarks probably correlate to entropy measures, which show industry concentration
:
Updated:
Create multiple plots to avoid over-plotting of points
:
Updated:
Approximately equal numbers of small, medium and large firms retained by departments?
:
Updated:
What topological maps of benchmark data might tell managers of law departments
:
Updated:
Reproducible research as an aspirational goal for legal metrics
:
Updated:
The “industry” of a company and a way to create an index of diversification with entropy measurements
:
Updated:
Currency conversion and some methodology decisions for benchmark studies
:
Updated:
The data perfection syndrome that may hobble some general counsel
:
Updated:
Might availability of benchmark metrics cause a “race to the top”?
:
Updated:
A graph, with nodes and edges, that conveys much about a law department’s use of outside counsel
:
Updated:
You can get Release 4.0 of the GC Metrics benchmark survey: more than 1,100 participants
:
Updated:
A metric proxy for the value of a patent – in how many countries is the patent registered
:
Updated:
US legal system costs for liabilities are higher than those of the Eurozone by fifty percent
:
Updated:
Law department benchmarks are not law department opinions counted up
:
Updated:
Release 1.0 sent to 196 law departments; get a sample if you write me
:
Updated:
The arrival of text mining and its implications for tracking ideas important to law department management
:
Updated:
Indirect sources of performance metrics that law departments have not tapped
:
Updated:
Three uncommon methods to visualize law department data: box plots, mosaic plots and heat maps
:
Updated:
An inverse relationship between the amount of litigation and the amount of regulation
:
Updated:
Here come the conglomerates, and there go the easy benchmark comparisons
:
Updated:
Graphics to explain data need to be both effective and attractive: introducing icon graphs
:
Updated:
The dearth of Japanese participants in the GC Metrics benchmark survey may diminish
:
Updated:
Free Webinar: Insights from the 2012 General Counsel Metrics Benchmark Survey (Release 5)
:
Updated:
$800 an hour rates and a shift noted toward larger and larger law firms
:
Updated:
Final Release of 2012 had 1,001 participants; why don’t you take the 2013 survey!
:
Updated:
Details to obtain free (or low cost) compensation report for law department administrators
:
Updated:
A correlation between the size of city where a law department has much of its staff and its performance metrics
:
Updated:
Online recording (YouTube) about “lawyers per billion of revenue” as a benchmark metric
:
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YouTube video on total legal spending as a percentage of revenue
:
Updated:
Just shy of 1,000 law departments in Release 4.0 of GC Metrics’ benchmark study
:
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You can’t take medians and add, subtract, or divide them
:
Updated:
Does data of participation in a benchmark survey reflect significantly different metrics?
:
Updated:
Finding of approximately one-third for GC compensation of salary, bonus, and long-term incentives – but the data is not representative
:
Updated:
Some findings regarding equity awards granted in-house lawyers
:
Updated:
Speculation that comp data of close to 2,000 U.S. GC’s a year are disclosed in annual reports
:
Updated:
Beyond predicting compensation with linear regression: find out the accuracy of the prediction and how close the data fit a line
:
Updated:
Data on penetration of specialized software into US legal departments
:
Updated:
Join Release 3.0 going out this week – 811 participants in the General Counsel Metrics benchmark study!
:
Updated:
A prediction if there come to be many virtual law firms that offer all their services at a fixed cost, such as $150 an hour
:
Updated:
Thoughts on cost differentials based on average hourly rates for litigation associates in 2011
:
Updated:
The methodology of a survey tells you how much you can rely on the data
:
Updated:
How you can predict compensation when you know something about a lawyer, and have lots of similar data from other lawyers
:
Updated:
Some figures on the average budgets of IP departments, and questions
:
Updated:
Nope, a call from a celebrity divorce lawyer isn’t a GC’s worst nightmare
:
Updated:
If HR metrics can be standardized and reported, won’t someone try to do the same for legal metrics?
:
Updated:
An ad of a vendor makes a claim that is hard to credit
:
Updated:
Notaries in Europe and their effects on law department staffing and spending
:
Updated:
Rees Morrison’s Morsels #169: in brevia-blogia veritas
:
Updated:
Size and number of law departments outside the U.S. — Brazil
:
Updated:
Custom software development compared to licensed software
:
Updated:
Some findings about the costs of patent troll litigation
:
Updated:
Software to help in-house lawyers who deal with import/export regulations
:
Updated:
LegalBase picked as a global legal outsourcing 100 rising star
:
Updated:
Projections regarding the number of law departments in countries need to bear in mind local mindsets
:
Updated:
Global competitors tend to be larger than domestic-only companies and thus legally more fit
:
Updated:
Survey respondents like self-service drafting of agreements but most law departments lack the tools
:
Updated:
New content in Release 2.0 of the General Counsel Metrics benchmark study, not to mention 483 participating law departments
:
Updated:
Part LXX in my series of collected metaposts embedded in other posts
:
Updated:
The shape of things to come: in-house lawyers around the world, where revenue comes from
:
Updated:
Debunking some management tools general counsel might consider using
:
Updated:
Evidence-based speculation on the number of health systems that have an in-house legal department
:
Updated:
A general formula based on a recent salary survey to let you see how your pay stands against others who practice in-house
:
Updated:
Customer relationship management as a feeder system, and more, for a law department
:
Updated:
Count full-time, long-serving contract lawyers as employed lawyers for purposes of headcount metrics
:
Updated:
Various ways to get lost with law-department process maps
:
Updated:
Criticisms of scenario planning as undertaken by law departments
:
Updated:
Let the lawyers who report to you deliver good news; you deliver bad news
:
Updated:
Downsides of focus groups as undertaken by law departments
:
Updated:
Five impediments to delegation
:
Updated:
Get the budget right from outside counsel, particularly if you are going to charge back the costs to a business unit or function
:
Updated:
To improve the invoicing process, consider “workload reports” and “progress reports”
:
Updated:
An example of how law departments can encourage their firms to innovate with software, process improvement, and knowledge management
:
Updated:
Global dispersion brings increased legal complexity, but higher legal costs?
:
Updated:
Offer video-game software to help train clients in preventive law and compliance
:
Updated:
Standards and audits for e-discovery vendors as complied with by doeLEGAL
:
Updated:
An expedited RFP process from Kaplan Inc.’s legal department
:
Updated:
Steps taken by Telstra to protect the attorney-client privilege after an appellate court questioned the privilege
:
Updated:
Law-firm invoices are considered tax documents in the European Union
:
Updated:
We interview prospective hires poorly, but we don’t recognize our ineptitude
:
Updated:
Spectral clustering of ten thousand causes of action and some management implications for the future
:
Updated:
Some managerial consequences of a large and widely-distributed legal department
:
Updated:
Minimum compensation levels set for in-house Brazilian lawyers
:
Updated:
Metrics on the Korean legal market and some extrapolations from them
:
Updated:
Excellent data from Australia’s largest state on government and corporate lawyers
:
Updated:
An exalted vision of the role of the Renaissance General Counsel
:
Updated:
A convention to identify and show extreme values in a set of data using a box-and-whisker plot
:
Updated:
Trumpet fanfare! Announcing my new-look blog, and some comments on posts by category
:
Updated:
Reverse mentoring whereby less experienced lawyers tutor more experienced lawyers
:
Updated:
Several advantages when you have your in-house lawyers present to the rest of the legal team
:
Updated:
Statistics compilation débuts in Release 2.0 of GC Metrics benchmarks, along with data 500+ companies – why don’t you join in?
:
Updated:
Obiter dicta on costs of patent litigation and the extravagance of discovery
:
Updated:
A methodology, albeit with much data missing, to estimate judgments paid by corporations in the United States
:
Updated:
A small attempt to stimulate collective thinking on law department operations
:
Updated:
A benchmark metric worth fighting for: lawyers per army combatants
:
Updated:
Reflections prompted by publicity regarding the ACC’s 2011 Census Report
:
Updated:
Wisdom about law departments and metrics from a GC serving as an interim CEO
:
Updated:
If there are something like 80,000 publicly traded companies in the world, how many privately held companies with law departments might there be?
:
Updated:
Rates and cost per hour comparisons between inside lawyers and lawyers at law firms in the United States
:
Updated:
Two “proven” profitability techniques of law firms that law departments should refuse
:
Updated:
Five categories for how your law firms might be rating you
:
Updated:
Somewhat misleading data about law departments and e-billing: leading and laggard countries
:
Updated:
Rees Morrison’s Morsels #168: the long and the short of it (in brevia veritas)
:
Updated:
Budget-busting when a company pays the defense costs of a director or officer
:
Updated:
Metrics on prevalence among law departments of refusal to pay for newbies out of law school
:
Updated:
Introverts compared to extroverts — general counsel as leaders and their personality styles
:
Updated:
An annual strategic planning process that involves a law department’s staff
:
Updated:
State-owned enterprises that have law departments probably differ from private-enterprises in their benchmark metrics
:
Updated:
Don’t bother with formal acknowledgements by law firms that you have retained them
:
Updated:
Web-based offering that prepares litigation decision trees
:
Updated:
Another software package to track diverse attorneys who work on your adversarial matters
:
Updated:
More progress toward the empirical turn for law department management
:
Updated:
Contract drafting and review tool made available by the Association of Corporate Counsel
:
Updated:
A clever and funny send-up of law departments and their reviews of marketing material
:
Updated:
Industry is the dominant basis for insights from staffing and spending benchmarks
:
Updated:
Four reasons why the oft-predicted transformation of the legal industry post-2008 has not materialized
:
Updated:
Columbia Law School and its successful effort to place graduates in legal departments
:
Updated:
The cost per hour of meetings in law departments, and related comments
:
Updated:
A method that would shed light on the relative cost of lawyers across different countries
:
Updated:
Little known about relationship between publicly disclosed settlements and those that are confidential
:
Updated:
Specialized survey on document management for intellectual property
:
Updated:
Lawyers posted overseas and then repatriated may have high rates of turnover
:
Updated:
First release of the General Counsel Metrics benchmark survey with 332 participating companies
:
Updated:
Four approaches to forecast the amount a law department will spend in a given month
:
Updated:
The start of a network for procurement professionals who are interested in legal department spending
:
Updated:
The impressive activities in Asia of the In-House Community
:
Updated:
Three clusters of software for matter management according to ground-breaking report
:
Updated:
An example of a secondment to be a company’s corporate secretary
:
Updated:
When profit margins of big firms are five times those of big companies, why not try to reduce fees a smidgeon?
:
Updated:
Compensation of in-house attorneys in Brazil, Dubai, and the United States – a need to adjust for income tax levels
:
Updated:
Rees Morrison’s Morsels #167: the long and the short of it (in brevia veritas)
:
Updated:
Part LXIX in my series of collected metaposts embedded in other posts
:
Updated:
An initiative underway to resolve e-commerce disputes online without someone from the company being involved
:
Updated:
Four surveys with data-based findings regarding alternative dispute resolution
:
Updated:
Tension between quarterly or semi-annual budgets and the requirement of Finance for an annual budget
:
Updated:
Activity budgets compared to cost budgets, and the final touch to both
:
Updated:
Pay data obtained mostly from large law departments makes lawyers in smaller departments feel bad
:
Updated:
A secular trend toward less regulation as governments try to increase national competitiveness
:
Updated:
A method to quantify co-location of in-house lawyers, and thus their value to the company
:
Updated:
Imitation, under-publicized, yet more likely to succeed than innovation
:
Updated:
Less or different work ahead for legal departments when companies can buy rights to use a patent on an exchange
:
Updated:
External spend per lawyer varies by matter management system: $10,000 per week processed per lawyer
:
Updated:
Some data about the cost of a matter management system
:
Updated:
Preliminary compensation data on general counsel in smaller law departments
:
Updated:
On the order of 100,000 in-house lawyers in the United States?
:
Updated:
According to an innovative report, three clusters of matter management systems (MMS), by average number of lawyers
:
Updated:
The broadest measure of legal-related spending by corporations – one-third for each portion?
:
Updated:
Country-based and language-specific matter management systems
:
Updated:
Innovative report combines data on matter management systems (MMS) with benchmark metrics
:
Updated:
Early findings on the relative frequency of matter management and contract management software
:
Updated:
Six observations gleaned from patent activity by a company that rarely seeks patents
:
Updated:
Two ideas to spur full discussions at a meeting
:
Updated:
General counsel who leave and take up consulting to law departments, other in-house lawyers, and even non-lawyers
:
Updated:
It would benefit in-house attorneys to keep a learning log and steadily improve and enrich it
:
Updated:
Four uncommon ways to harvest ideas for management improvements
:
Updated:
Six techniques to unleash your creativity
:
Updated:
Neuroscience will help in-house counsel think more effectively
:
Updated:
Metrics plus further thoughts on the substitution of an in-house lawyer for outside counsel
:
Updated:
Widening roles of corporate counsel over five years, according to Deloitte survey
:
Updated:
Try a de Finetti game on your law firm that estimates odds of success for a lawsuit
:
Updated:
References to law departments of government agencies and a surmise on their size
:
Updated:
A controversial recommendation by a consultant to rotate business unit generalists periodically
:
Updated:
Three ways survey respondents believe their legal department demonstrates value
:
Updated:
U.S. general counsel rank higher in their company than do their non-U.S. counterparts
:
Updated:
Canned reports, dashboards, and data analytics – different levels of insight
:
Updated:
As an alternative to secondment from a law firm, consider providers of in-house counsel on an as-needed basis
:
Updated:
An update on firms that invest in lawsuits of companies
:
Updated:
Five methods whereby external counsel deliver their advice, with email surging in popularity during the past five years
:
Updated:
Private equity investments in companies that sell to law departments
:
Updated:
A clamor over the putative trend toward contract attorneys and outsourcing, but evidence from reliable data is absent
:
Updated:
Marketing review and ad claims – use of a claims matrix
:
Updated:
The corporate security function under the general counsel of AmerisourceBergen
:
Updated:
Common reasons for people leaving a law department
:
Updated:
Languages spoken by lawyers in a legal department: three levels of proficiency
:
Updated:
The positive side of law firm bills as marketing tools
:
Updated:
Braggadocio if law departments hold themselves out as gifted, strategists, beacons of integrity, and patron saints of corporate social responsibility
:
Updated:
Two unusual responsibilities of Ford’s General Counsel
:
Updated:
To clarify two contributions of outside counsel: specialized expertise vs. assistance with complexity
:
Updated:
A third of your time on e-mail, and more ideas to be effective during that time
:
Updated:
Higher pay, poorer performance for two years, and less job stability for external hires
:
Updated:
Preferred management levers redirect behavior, they don’t try to reform culture
:
Updated:
Rees Morrison’s Morsels #166: the long and the short of it
:
Updated:
Twitter followers of this blog, or me, and changes in RSS patterns
:
Updated:
Small companies can have very odd profiles of lawyers per billion or lawyers per thousand employees
:
Updated:
If one of your lawyers leaves to take a general counsel post, are there smiles or bile?
:
Updated:
Your search firm as a source of feedback for a new general counsel
:
Updated:
The reverse of musical chairs when you promote from within the department
:
Updated:
Is there something unique about legal departments not possessed by other support functions?
:
Updated:
Reactions to a very high standard set for what constitutes a “successful law department”
:
Updated:
Additional thoughts about the five practice areas with the highest total cash compensation
:
Updated:
Again, not surprising that even large legal departments don’t segregate and track e-discovery costs
:
Updated:
As newly-arriving general counsel, should you bring along your former assistant (no) or use you predecessor’s (probably)?
:
Updated:
An overlooked obstacle in legal departments to effective control of law firm fees – split motivation by the lawyers who manage them
:
Updated:
Seven semi-advanced math concepts that count for general counsel
:
Updated:
Over time, the geographic distribution of in-house lawyers will match the sources of revenue of global companies
:
Updated:
Some more tips for the e-mail burdened corporate lawyer
:
Updated:
Five ways to organize how we might organize our thinking about law department management
:
Updated:
Five highest paid practice areas, according to 2011 compensation study, and their fully loaded cost
:
Updated:
Distributions of data: Gaussian, power-law, exponential, Pareto, Poisson, and barbell
:
Updated:
Anecdotes and desires don’t equal empirical data, as proved by all the talk about alternative fee arrangements, yet inadequate studies
:
Updated:
What factors determine whether an in-house lawyer gets a salary increase? Survey findings
:
Updated:
A general counsel’s budget means little if the company wages war on all fronts, including litigation onslaughts
:
Updated:
Views on obstacles to investment in legal technology from French in-house counsel
:
Updated:
Legal departments as nonlinear, complex systems
:
Updated:
After the third e-mail on a given topic, pick up the phone or visit and talk
:
Updated:
Advantages and disadvantages of staff counsel
:
Updated:
No! Don’t think that the “legal team should be an active participant in all critical corporate decisions”
:
Updated:
Why aren’t IP lawyers ever more ascendant in legal departments?
:
Updated:
Legal departments, among other corporate functions in Europe, don’t get enough CEO guidance on focus
:
Updated:
Three broad eras asserted to differ in the influence of general counsel, but no evidence
:
Updated:
“Legal metrics that matter with defense counsel”
:
Updated:
A way to quantify industry dynamism so that benchmark metrics have more context
:
Updated:
Things that do not work to promote knowledge management in legal departments
:
Updated:
Nine benefits to the use of specialized legal software ranked by French in-house counsel
:
Updated:
A method to predict the likelihood of patent disputes
:
Updated:
Predictive analytics will extend from claims management to litigation management
:
Updated:
How might we determine whether managerial nous has improved in legal departments during the past two decades or so?
:
Updated:
Eleven software systems used by legal departments for patent and trademark docketing
:
Updated:
Speculations on metrics revealed by a survey on e-discovery and law departments
:
Updated:
All numbers used by managers of in-house counsel are inexact
:
Updated:
Management experiments that a general counsel might try
:
Updated:
Are the key benchmark metrics of early participants in a survey materially different than those of later participants?
:
Updated:
2012 GC Metrics benchmark survey exceeds 100 participants early on – we encourage you to take part
:
Updated:
When we say some number of things equals another, we often glide over differences
:
Updated:
Two simple ways to increase your creativity – vary what you learn and learn in various places
:
Updated:
Value delivered by law firms: the perspectives of consequentialism and deontology
:
Updated:
Careful reading, how in-house lawyers prefer to take in information, can’t be sped up
:
Updated:
General counsel should thoughtfully balance plumbing and poetry
:
Updated:
With so many banks in the U.S. by the late 19th century, surely there were some law departments?
:
Updated:
Getting to the core of the Central Limit Theorem
:
Updated:
If commercial law falls short of moral acceptability, what a tension that creates for in-house counsel!
:
Updated:
Self-quantifying, which entails measuring your personal indicators, could increase productivity
:
Updated:
A link between more specialists in larger departments, more innovation, and legal cost control
:
Updated:
When we say some number of things equals another, we often glide over differences
:
Updated:
The limits of metrics in law department management – but save the baby
:
Updated:
How many corporate law departments are there in the United States, based on publicly-traded companies compared to privately held
:
Updated:
If you manage outside counsel and act like a jerk, how likely is it that your law firm will decide not to represent you?
:
Updated:
The attractions of an in-house legal job compared to private practice, according to 820 Canadian lawyers
:
Updated:
How Canadian in-house lawyers describe their work day
:
Updated:
In the UK, fixed fees for all legal services, for small companies
:
Updated:
Average number of hours worked per week by Canadian in-house lawyers: 47 – roughly 1,800 chargeable hours a year
:
Updated:
Predominance of small law departments among Canadian companies
:
Updated:
Non-compete constraints on in-house lawyers who move to a competitor’s law department
:
Updated:
Most law departments, being small, have few or no diversity initiatives, since only the largest departments report them
:
Updated:
French legal departments are a much more lawyer-heavy than U.S. legal departments
:
Updated:
Rees Morrison’s Morsels #165: the long and the short of it
:
Updated:
Ten dollars on law firms for every dollar spent externally other than on law firms
:
Updated:
Fixed-fee agreements should be matched by the law firm’s rights to influence business practices
:
Updated:
Clichéd and monotonous examples when people cite certain law department management practices
:
Updated:
Two restrictive definitions of the term “direct report”
:
Updated:
Lawyers per billion dollars of French law departments is higher than for U.S. departments
:
Updated:
Diagrams, flow charts, sketches to depict and clarify complex agreements
:
Updated:
Psychology compared to cognitive science, with a nod to sociology and evolutionary development of the human brain
:
Updated:
Lower total legal spending as a percentage of revenue for French legal departments compared to U.S. departments
:
Updated:
The dead hand of path dependence lies on all law departments
:
Updated:
Talents compared to skills of in-house lawyers
:
Updated:
It is wrong for a law department to negotiate a fixed fee, but pay actuals aif they are less
:
Updated:
Two points on whether innovation flourishes more in larger or smaller law departments
:
Updated:
Ten functional areas overseen by general counsel or other executive
:
Updated:
The productivity of in-house counsel
:
Updated:
Approximately one out of four law departments reported use of e-billing software in a survey
:
Updated:
The larger the department, the fewer women report to the general counsel
:
Updated:
Contracts for outsourced services were infrequent as found by a recent survey
:
Updated:
To avoid becoming a legal malpractice plaintiff – five steps, but three are implausible
:
Updated:
Cultivate and appreciate your Brodmann area 10, especially if you are churlish
:
Updated:
Survey data from French companies about responsibilities and reporting of heads of legal
:
Updated:
Collective action by groups of legal departments – potential large but realization small
:
Updated:
As law departments spread offices around the globe, the patchwork of attorney-client privilege worsens management concerns [metapost attorney-client privilege II 13]
:
Updated:
Part LXIII in my series of collected metaposts embedded
:
Updated:
Link documents to emails, blog and wiki posts, instant messaging
:
Updated:
ROI, risk avoided, and value delivered always depend on assumptions, which are probabilistic and problematic
:
Updated:
How far we are from gauging relative ROI of software that is common among legal departments
:
Updated:
Clearer terminology for software and when law departments modify it
:
Updated:
More often than not, the legal department owns contract management for both sales and purchase contracts
:
Updated:
Data on time tracking by legal departments in recent survey
:
Updated:
Perceptions by law departments of law firms’ obstacles to AFAs; gaps between rankings
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Turn to a law firm to analyze your spending data and perhaps combine it with similar data from other companies
:
Updated:
As a software strategy, all-in-one compared to best-in-breed (and a word on platforms)
:
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Kudos to a law firm that re-engineered processes and software to meet the demands of a client
:
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Morrison on Metrics: the mathematics of permutations
:
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Wormhole as Best in Show at LegalTechNY?
:
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This blog, seven years old today!
:
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The largest law departments among U.S. companies in the Fortune 500
:
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Survey data about numbers of law firms retained and firms per lawyer
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A matter management system vendor with 400 law departments – Legal Suite
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Most of the internal budget for a legal department is compensation and benefits
:
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On to 1,000 marches the 2012 GC Metrics benchmark survey! Please join!
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Accommodation theory sounds impressive but does it inform the mundane world of law departments and their operations?
:
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Outside counsel on a retainer fee for colleges and universities without a legal department
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Terminology about what you can license: applications, programs, software packages, solutions, and systems – but no clear distinctions among the terms
:
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An unexpected prevalence of contract management systems
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Data on average contract review times by legal departments, but hard to draw a conclusion from it
:
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Who wins the battle of the paper; a quarter of all contracts get no review by an in-house lawyer
:
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Rees Morrison’s Morsels #165: the long and the short of it
:
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Government regulations can help law departments, too!
:
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Curious lack of interest in e-billing software, according to recent survey
:
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Behind the proliferation of awards to law departments – cherchez la buck
:
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“Most Innovative Technology in a Corporate Law Department” – a choice of legal hold software?
:
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Survey data regarding the distribution of in-house lawyers by practice area
:
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Rolling averages as a way to show more accurately the current trend
:
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SharePoint and offerings built around it were plentiful at LegalTechNY
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Matter management dominates at LegalTech NY for in-house lawyers, and a few consultants appeared
:
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From where do law departments hire
:
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If your department creates specialized software, two reasons to relinquish it – cost and continuous improvementIf your department creates specialized software, two reasons to relinquish it – cost and continuous improvement
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Data regarding the number of general counsel who also hold the corporate secretary title
:
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Learn 39 contract management software packages when you let me know the one your department uses
:
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Law Department Management group on LinkedIn now has more than 1,000 members!
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Metrics about heads of law department operations, IS and finance
:
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Management concepts that are important to those who lead in law departments (Part 4 of a series)
:
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Collected thoughts on scatter-grams
:
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A catchy spectrum to describe general counsel in terms of willingness to change operational aspects
:
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Chief Legal Officer title compared to General Counsel title
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Odd gaps between average billing rates of U.S. litigation associates and partners
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U.S. litigation firms charged a blended rate of $385 an hour, according to TyMetrix research
:
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Transparency Labs and its guidance on how to make contracts more understandable
:
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Rees Morrison’s Morsels #164: the long and the short of it
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No, average costs in the U.S. for an in-house lawyer are not $125 an hour; think at least 50 percent higher
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Chipsters, a group for women lawyers who are IP chief counsel
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Five suggestions related to decision-making
:
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After noting 15 direct reports to the general counsel of AIG
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As a general counsel, administering compared to managing or leading a law department
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If law firms are chronically over-staffed, why aren’t they more amenable to AFAs?
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A record 829 law departments in the Fifth Release of GC Metrics’ benchmark survey – and you can get it
:
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A different use of “strategic planning” for a law department: do things effectively rather than anticipate the future
:
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It pays to keep up with the eight compensation-related metaposts on this blog
:
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Gaps between median rankings, expressed as percentages of the lower ranking, tells more than just nominal rankings
:
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General counsel use comp benchmark data to defend against HR’s data
:
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A “swap” of knowledge between a law department and its outside counsel
:
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Posts here about compensation
:
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An exaggerated claim that offshoring has become a “new standard”
:
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Views on legal risk depend on the financial resources of the company to run them
:
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An estimate of the number of law departments in the world based on its GDP
:
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Regardless of compliance reporting lines, updates directly to the Board at least once a year
:
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Compensation of non-U.S. in-house lawyers
:
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Embedded views we may have of law departments, unquestioned and deeply rooted
:
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When do general counsel most want to have benchmark data?
:
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A management initiative is a project, and a project is different than a process
:
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Mentoring programs can benefit newly-hired lawyers, in addition to diverse lawyers
:
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TrakIt Pro for tracking how much you spend on diverse outside counsel
:
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How to confirm and think about to a benchmark metric that puts you in a bad light
:
Updated:
Part LXII in my series of collected metaposts embedded
:
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Poking at purported data on high satisfaction among general counsel regarding their careers
:
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Seven revisions of the most common management tools of general counsel, based on my 2005 list of 18
:
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Four kinds of questions on surveys that law departments are asked to complete
:
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You are what you schedule; schedules make the lawyer; I schedule therefore I am, etc.
:
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Do you manage based on values or on a world view?
:
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Picoeconomics analyzes patterns of consumption behavior
:
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External spending per lawyer – in the U.S, about $10,000 per attorney per week
:
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Penny Simpson, a wonderful person, and sadness
:
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Ten most thought-provoking posts of November 2011
:
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Sinatra, legal memos beamed from the moon and other snatches from Wordnik
:
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If globalization were pushing law departments, they would be de-converging law firms
:
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A look back 14 years at ten New Year’s resolutions for law departments
:
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Can you extrapolate to unemployment figures for in-house counsel?
:
Updated:
7,000 – seven thousand – 7*103 – √49,000,000 – 0x1B58 (hexadecimal) – 1101101011000 (binary) – 15530 (octal) – 4074 (duodecimal) – 103.845098
:
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More on the debate whether a GC can also serve effectively as Chief Compliance Officer
:
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An uber-post on 19 hyperposts (collections of metaposts)
:
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At the root of process analysis and improvement, branch out to decision-trees
:
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A second hyper-post on patent posts from this blog
:
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Something is seriously wrong if a main reason to settle a lawsuit is to lessen your attorneys fees
:
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Cottage Industrialist – Phil Homburger of Synaptec Software’s LawBase (Part 6 of a series)
:
Updated:
A critique of some data and an alarmist conclusion base on it regarding e-discovery cost tracking
:
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Survey data about workload related to regulators
:
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A ratio of the number of major lawsuits compared to major arbitrations: 5 to 1?
:
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More definitive than “bet the company” are “material cases” defined as influencing an investor to buy or sell stock
:
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The recent intellectual capital on this blog about intellectual property
:
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Patent records worldwide as possible proxy for globalization
:
Updated:
A second collar for fixed-fee proposals that encompass very significant and hard-to-know cost swings
:
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If not a profit center, at least ferret out insurance coverage that might cover attorney fees in litigation
:
Updated:
An in-your-face-firm view of what law departments ought not to be charged for
:
Updated:
A look at maturity models applicable to law departments
:
Updated:
Two numbers about discovery costs and total litigation costs, with circumspection
:
Updated:
A salutary limitation on e-mail: extended discussions and disagreements are much better by phone
:
Updated:
Modest satisfaction (or dissatisfaction) by U.S. companies with law firms on four areas of litigation representation
:
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Which matters should a matter management system track?
:
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Rees Morrison’s Morsels #163: posts longa, morsels breva
:
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Total shareholder return and limited its role in law department benchmarks
:
Updated:
Hot lines vie with supervisors as equivalent sources of useful tips about possible wrong-doing
:
Updated:
Two more choices when it comes to graphing data: double axis and inverted graphs
:
Updated:
Is it right to praise the law firm lawyers and not mention the law department’s lawyers in the $4 billion T-Mobile breakup fee?
:
Updated:
A half year of my columns for InsideCounsel and the posts about them
:
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The importance to law departments of tracking their accruals
:
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If there were a historical look back at law department management, here are four perspectives
:
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Empirical study of contract disputes in Europe and its use of complexity indices
:
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Rees Morrison’s Morsels #163: posts longa, morsels breva
:
Updated:
It seems so simple, but how do we know the total spend by U.S. legal departments?
:
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Borrowing from macro- and micro-economics to consider perspectives on legal department management
:
Updated:
vLex, an online repository of legal information with extensive geographic and language coverage
:
Updated:
A general counsel position for an international organization with income tax-free but a three-year contract
:
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“There are too many lawyers who charge $300 an hour,” grumbles a law school professor, a statement that would puzzle an economist
:
Updated:
The size of the U.S. EDD (electronic document discovery) market
:
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Putting a law firm “in the penalty box” for unsatisfactory work or relations
:
Updated:
A massive request for information (RFI) by Marsh & McLennan’s legal department regarding cost control measures
:
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Significant decline over the past decade plus in the number of trials may have offset e-discovery spending increases
:
Updated:
U.S. lawyers working for the government outnumber corporate lawyers two to one?
:
Updated:
More numbers as a basis for estimating the prevalence of European law departments
:
Updated:
At a conference for claims managers, the swarm of 56 vendors who sponsored it
:
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Concerted action by multiple law departments for their shared benefits – an overview
:
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Law department management, nowhere near a theoretical unity or a discipline, is mostly a way of thinking
:
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Top ten reasons not to publish a Top Ten List of Management Trends for Law Departments
:
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The not-atypical path of one general counsel to the top
:
Updated:
A typical set of outside counsel management activities, described at Marsh Mac
:
Updated:
The general counsel of Pfizer describes well one of the challenges of the position
:
Updated:
“Has the science of procurement management entered into the legal department?”
:
Updated:
The “power paradox” and how it can suborn general counsel
:
Updated:
General counsel face rough politics and sometimes difficult CEOs – another example
:
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Three more drags on the productivity of teams
:
Updated:
Big city law departments borrow lawyers on a volunteer basis from local law firms
:
Updated:
Answers to three burning issues of grammar, bravely faced up to by this intrepid blogger
:
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We aren’t rational when the three deep-brain organs fire unconsciously
:
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Rees Morrison’s Morsels #162: posts longa, morsels breva
:
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A city’s law department that requires state approval to retain outside counsel
:
Updated:
A thoughtful issue raised by Fronterion about the effect of law departments hiring LPOs that law firms must use
:
Updated:
Risk tolerance advantages larger law departments, which may partly explain their economies of scale for legal spend
:
Updated:
Still time to join 800 other law departments for the final release (mid-January) of the GC Metrics benchmark survey
:
Updated:
Key areas of focus when two law departments merge
:
Updated:
Seyfarth Shaw, a law firm, consults to legal departments on Lean Six Sigma methodologies
:
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Expected value of a situation, such as a case, gives a way to forecast outcomes
:
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Convey probabilities to clients in terms of repeated instances of a similar type
:
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“Cost creep” and its subversive inevitability in law departments
:
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Report of consultants OMC on LPOs and a useful list of tasks that might be handled that way
:
Updated:
Law departments apparently see little value in formal evaluations of their external counsel
:
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A power law distribution for the powerful law firms paid by a law department?
:
Updated:
Two reasons proposed for reverse convergence: globalization and regulation, plus cost control
:
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Hyperpost on legal risk [metapost legal risk III 2009-2010 11 and 7 metas]
:
Updated:
Survey suggests outside counsel spending is crowding out inside budgets?
:
Updated:
The second-most-important benchmark number: the leverage ratio
:
Updated:
Eight reasons why total legal expenses as a percentage of revenue is one of the top benchmarks
:
Updated:
An app for in-house counsel who negotiate and settle
:
Updated:
Ten most interesting posts of October 2011 on this blog
:
Updated:
Understanding your department’s performance is sometimes a function of math, viz, logarithms and exponential formulae
:
Updated:
Soon to be available: with metrics, organized, cross-referenced, and indexed, more than 140 posts on matter management systems
:
Updated:
My blog post with the highest number of visits – comparison of GC and CLO titles
:
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Three observations about legal risk: subjective, power-laden, and poorly calculated
:
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Intelligence matters, not simply years of diligent practice, at the higher elevations of thinking
:
Updated:
The corporate part of a lawyer’s title sets a pecking order
:
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Base rate neglect when we think about possible scenarios or answers
:
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More than 90,000 law firm memos available on Knowledge Mosaic
:
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Deeper thinking, exploration of more pros and cons, can lead to less feeling of confidence in a decision
:
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Don’t be held in place by the anchoring effect! Know when to weigh anchor!
:
Updated:
An empirical test of “hire the partner or hire the firm”
:
Updated:
Value and its flip-side, risk, ought to both be stated for a time period
:
Updated:
Another interpretation of bundling by law firms – you get high end work only if you pile on our less skilled lawyers and commodity
:
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If you think you can, your willpower increases
:
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Reconsider two common beliefs about leadership: trying times demand boldness and innovation is key
:
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The legal industry could use watchdogs, like politics has, of the accuracy of numbers cited
:
Updated:
Margin of error on benchmark findings falls as the number of participants rises (by the square root of the number of respondents)
:
Updated:
The law of small numbers and its large effect when collections of numbers vary in size
:
Updated:
Rees Morrison’s Morsels #161: posts longa, morsels breva
:
Updated:
Causal thinking with stories compared to statistical thinking with numbers
:
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The typical longevity of a matter management system averages five to seven years
:
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For law departments, cyclical and structural changes
:
Updated:
A method to represent data with more balance: Winsorize it
:
Updated:
Part LXI in my series of collected metaposts
:
Updated:
Chaos theory – non-linear functions in legal departments
:
Updated:
The basic economics of demand for legal services and supply of them
:
Updated:
The echo-chamber effect when surveys tap similar groups year after year
:
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Methodology and benchmarks: artifacts of collecting or handling the data that undesirably influence results
:
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Seasonality, or short seasons, as a possible artifact in some benchmark results
:
Updated:
The geographic distribution of ANZ lawyers, a hypothesis, and a large on-boarding
:
Updated:
My doubts about a claimed increase of 75% in litigation costs over the past ten years
:
Updated:
Devilishly difficult to avoid the halo effect
:
Updated:
Help from matter management software to keep track of volume discount arrangements
:
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Former judge becomes a general counsel
:
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A matter management system that includes an outside counsel guidelines feature
:
Updated:
Caution: recognize your System 1 reactions, refine them with System 2 thinking, and keep fit
:
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Client satisfaction surveys and employee morale surveys give more voice to the disgruntled and extreme views
:
Updated:
Mental priming and the effect on judgment and thought
:
Updated:
Some data on how many law firms companies of a certain size typically use – roughly four
:
Updated:
Technology, defined broadly, may be the road to increased productivity in law departments
:
Updated:
Might the SEC someday mandate disclosure of total legal spend?
:
Updated:
Over ten years, on average each year five percent higher hourly rates for large U.S. law firms
:
Updated:
Lawyers plus computers equals better quality and productivity (lawsourcing?)
:
Updated:
Corporate illegality increases law department workload and a methodology to add some reality to that statement
:
Updated:
I hope my article’s remarks matter on matter management software
:
Updated:
Cottage Industrialist – Eric Blankenship of EAG/CaseTrack (Part 5 of a series)
:
Updated:
An uphill fight to get in-house lawyers to feel comfortable with large numbers
:
Updated:
Rees Morrison’s Morsels #160: posts longa, morsels breva
:
Updated:
New technology, technology new to you, or better uses of installed software
:
Updated:
A quantification of RHIP in a client satisfaction survey by a law department
:
Updated:
Ten intriguing posts of September 2011 on this blog
:
Updated:
Cottage Industrialist, a founder or top executive of a leading vendor to law departments: Joe Bookman of CompInfo (Part 4 of a series)
:
Updated:
Tenth set of blogs that have referred readers to LawDepartmentManagementBlog
:
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A reporting line to the board to assure the general counsel of more independence
:
Updated:
Mitratech survey of law department spending and one unexpected result about GRC
:
Updated:
Everyone assumes that regulations keep piling up and law departments pay the price in increased workload
:
Updated:
Do you buy these six protestations by Legal regarding Procurement?
:
Updated:
Mitratech, a leading matter management system provider, acquired by private equity firm
:
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Thoughts from a guest author on unbundling legal services: ethics and productivity
:
Updated:
600 law departments in the GCM benchmark survey, and many more coming before Release 4.0 in December!
:
Updated:
Will the ILTSO address standards for law department technology?
:
Updated:
Does Marx’s Labor Theory of Value apply to billing by the hour?
:
Updated:
Create time margins to reduce stress and boost productivity
:
Updated:
To reduce legal budgets, an even split of views regarding hiring or firing inside lawyers
:
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A concept for law firm value – circumstantial value in use
:
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Industry intensity one year later based on four key benchmarks
:
Updated:
Rees Morrison’s Morsels #159: posts longa, morsels breva
:
Updated:
Typical audit fees during 2009 were approximately one-tenth of total legal fees
:
Updated:
To compare metrics over time, it’s not how long a survey has run but how consistent is its base of respondents
:
Updated:
Levels or scale and comprehension of legal department management
:
Updated:
Data, and thoughts, on allocation of work between inside and outside counsel
:
Updated:
Plan for your department’s technology, even if you don’t try for strategic business plans
:
Updated:
Don’t you wish you could wax eloquent on the benefits of statistical coefficients of variation?
:
Updated:
LinkedIn groups: Law Department Management and Law Department Administrators – you are enthusiastically invited to join
:
Updated:
Costs of financial printers, proxy, and directors should not be included in the law department’s budget?
:
Updated:
When finding an expert witness, use a specialized service or use your litigation firm?
:
Updated:
An explicit promotion by a law firm of its technology consulting services to law departments
:
Updated:
Unbundled legal services, meaning law departments hiring lawyers to represent them on a very limited basis
:
Updated:
A design structure matrix (DSM) to plot how a complex project should proceed
:
Updated:
The allure of what psychologists call cognitive fluency: too simple explanations for a much more complex world
:
Updated:
Just what is the total spend by legal departments, in the United States or globally?
:
Updated:
Humans don’t intuitively grasp large numbers, such as millions and billions
:
Updated:
Parsing the drop off of the HBR Consulting benchmark study
:
Updated:
Three-fourths of large law departments have a dedicated legal IT group
:
Updated:
Quick Response codes – the ubiquitous, Rorschach-looking black and white squares
:
Updated:
Five partners from Willkie Farr & Gallagher en masse to join Bloomberg law department
:
Updated:
Most promotions change a person’s scale, few change scope
:
Updated:
Response bias: something to watch out for in surveys completed by a single person
:
Updated:
A common reason for the withering of KM and firm evaluations — trepidation
:
Updated:
Inexplicable frequency of “bet the company” as a search term that lands on this blog
:
Updated:
Ineptitude, forgetting a step, assails in-house lawyers, maybe more than inability or ignorance – use checklists!
:
Updated:
Advantages for busy lawyers of memory augmentation software
:
Updated:
Rees Morrison’s Morsels #158: posts longa, morsels breva
:
Updated:
Cottage Industrialist, a founder or top executive of a leading vendor to law departments: Ladan Behnia of Mitratech (Part 3 of a series)
:
Updated:
RSG Media software to manage contract rights
:
Updated:
Some variability in participation numbers during 2007-2011 of the ACC/Empsight large-department compensation survey
:
Updated:
Patent spending and how its budget treatment varies between law departments
:
Updated:
More leaders needed as law departments disperse geographically
:
Updated:
Five reasons to consider document automation, and three more of mine
:
Updated:
IBM hires straight from law school and locates half its lawyers outside the U.S.
:
Updated:
Two client-benefiting practices from the U.S. law firm, Gibbons: a CLE Academy and a “kmAlerts System”
:
Updated:
If you choose a firm to handle a large portfolio of work, consider immersion training at the start
:
Updated:
A case study of how to use a psychometric instrument for a legal department retreat
:
Updated:
Drinker Biddle & Reath hired a chief value officer (CVO): does such a step make a difference to law department clients?
:
Updated:
Three comments on contract automation from an article by Business Integrity
:
Updated:
A clue that “globalization” hasn’t the burdensome effect on law departments often claimed
:
Updated:
Unusual software used by law departments who responded to an ILTA survey
:
Updated:
Published benchmarks may be tougher than what actually prevails because of selection bias
:
Updated:
Concentration in global industries and what that might mean for their law departments
:
Updated:
What do lawyers mean when they say their department has or lacks hierarchy?
:
Updated:
Long-term thinking gives junior lawyers time in the spotlight
:
Updated:
Knowledge management efforts falter since they are perceived as a tax on a lawyer’s personal “income”
:
Updated:
To protect an idea, a patent is one choice but so is defensive publication
:
Updated:
Conflicting data on hours worked per week by Australian in-house attorneys
:
Updated:
Review of marketing materials regarding claims: the netherworld of law department roles and priorities
:
Updated:
Combating counterfeits of Procter & Gamble products and the efforts of the legal department
:
Updated:
Pros (mostly) and cons (a few) of an IT Committee in a law department
:
Updated:
Update on corporate secretary and entity management software
:
Updated:
Communication dragons in law departments and some swords with which to slay (or at least wound) them
:
Updated:
Software that helps legal departments oversee their patent portfolio
:
Updated:
Sumptuary laws in 14th century Florence and their echoes in outside counsel guidelines on disbursements
:
Updated:
Cottage Industrialist, a founder or top executive of a leading vendor to law departments: Rob Thomas of Serengeti (#2 in a series)
:
Updated:
Most-cited document management systems (DMSs) in large legal departments
:
Updated:
Relatively low penetration of software for specialized delivery of board materials
:
Updated:
Hard to see how establishing internal and external trust is a goal worth mentioning
:
Updated:
Starwoods and its contract-based malpractice case against a law firm that wouldn’t apologiz
:
Updated:
Disney’s huge and distributed legal department: videoconferences and tablet computers
:
Updated:
Professional indemnity insurance and in-house lawyers who act other than as legal counselors
:
Updated:
I doubt that perceptions of objectivity are the greatest challenge faced by in-house lawyers
:
Updated:
Has the gap between costs of inside and outside counsel been narrowing? I think not.
:
Updated:
Find out how many industry peers of your size are among the of 530 participants in Release 3.0 of General Counsel Metrics’ benchmark survey
:
Updated:
Unknown ratio of U.S. corporate in-house lawyers to government in-house lawyers; some Australian data
:
Updated:
Survey from Australia on why in-house counsel like their jobs
:
Updated:
Online legal research through Bloomberg Law at a fixed price simplifies management of law firm costs by in-house counsel
:
Updated:
An elaborate coding system for accounts payable, but why not use a matter management system?
:
Updated:
A portent of the future: apps on tablet computers for in-house lawyers, supported by SAP and Tata Consulting
:
Updated:
Videoconferencing likely to become more common as cost falls and quality rises
:
Updated:
Rees Morrison’s Morsels #157: posts longa, morsels breva
:
Updated:
An article from Canada about how to show the value of your law department
:
Updated:
Part LX in a series of collected metaposts embedded previously
:
Updated:
Networks of law firms that specialize, and speculation for other areas of law
:
Updated:
Survey data on penetration of matter management – spreadsheets, internally hosted specialized applications, or Web-based applications
:
Updated:
Four arguments for and five against compliance heads reporting to the general counsel
:
Updated:
Team of 30 IP experts at Pernod Ricard organized into six dispersed centers of excellence
:
Updated:
Operational issues once a matter management system has been installed
:
Updated:
Two obstacles to being able to concentrate your thinking, and some suggestions
:
Updated:
In the UK, distinct movement toward less well known firms and international firms, away from Magic Circle and Silver Circle firms
:
Updated:
Ask clients about the perceived value of the legal department, not the head of legal
:
Updated:
U.K. legal departments weathered the recession’s storm
:
Updated:
Empirical findings that question the sky-is-falling on legal department staffing and spending
:
Updated:
Twenty-three years of Case&Point –a matter management system for legal departments
:
Updated:
Many kinds of software complement matter management packages
:
Updated:
What choices do general counse have regarding matter management software?
:
Updated:
Rees Morrison’s Morsels #156: posts longa, morsels breva]
:
Updated:
A decline over five years in the proportion of legal work sent to outside counsel?
:
Updated:
Corporate entity software and more from Corporate Focus
:
Updated:
Attitudes toward law firms publicizing work they have done for a law department
:
Updated:
Six reasons, put succinctly, for why it’s better to practice law in a corporation than in a firm
:
Updated:
Just what are “mobile apps” and how might they infiltrate law departments?
:
Updated:
Certificates of compliance from a law department? Bizarre
:
Updated:
Recent posts on the benefits of having a matter management system
:
Updated:
A dozen key terms that need clear definition and application in benchmarks of law department staff and spend
:
Updated:
Curious data on dispute settlement over the past five years
:
Updated:
Another large, global network of law firms: First Law International
:
Updated:
The cottage industry for law departments adds some rooms (well, posts)
:
Updated:
Still time to get Release 3.0 in October of the GCM benchmark survey: 490+ participants and no cost
:
Updated:
If you use multiple offices of a law firm, you have a stronger relationship
:
Updated:
A confusing interpretation of regulatory activity: subpoenas for documents
:
Updated:
Unstated consequences or assumptions whenever we measure something in a law department
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Updated:
Hotline systems and some comments
:
Updated:
Cross-sectional analysis and invoices from law firms
:
Updated:
Data on a 50 percent increase in the average number of “non-legal” roles held by general counsel
:
Updated:
Domain names and managing that Internet demesne
:
Updated:
“Just do what I say,” a common answer, wholly fails to inform or motivate employees
:
Updated:
Cottage Industrialist, a founder or top executive of a leading vendor to law departments: Frank Orzo of LTOnline
:
Updated:
Major consolidation in claims matter management (BottomLine acquired Allegiant)
:
Updated:
Research findings on law departments that reported no licensed matter management system
:
Updated:
References am diesen blog fur law departments in Deutschland
:
Updated:
Dour commentary on the inevitable failures of communication
:
Updated:
The increasing prominence of intellectual property and the concomitant increase in work for legal departments
:
Updated:
Limit meetings with business partners to 30 minutes
:
Updated:
Legal costs per unit of profit; and steward company money more carefully than your own
:
Updated:
Part LIX in a series of collected metaposts embedded previously
:
Updated:
Excellent summary of patent aggregators AST and RPX
:
Updated:
In re Posner: Ten-year term limit for general counsel?
:
Updated:
Matter management systems licensed by small law departments – some data
:
Updated:
Some additional techniques to generate new ideas through brainstorming
:
Updated:
Systemic tilts in benchmarks reported by surveys
:
Updated:
Returning to return on investment
:
Updated:
Mishandled metrics – eight sneaky tricks with numbers
:
Updated:
Instrumental knowledge about management practices would satisfy many general counsel
:
Updated:
“Loads” and a designer’s way of thinking about information processing and complexity
:
Updated:
Another foray into the definition of legal complexity – three features
:
Updated:
$7 billion cost of lawsuits by non-practicing entities (NPEs) over patent infringement
:
Updated:
Data analytics, Hadoop, and future insights beyond database reports from matter management programs
:
Updated:
Steps taken by law departments to manage e-discovery costs
:
Updated:
A piece of data about how often law departments handle e-discovery in-house
:
Updated:
Getting the Deal Through (GTDT) and its offerings of global legal information, free for in-house lawyers
:
Updated:
What pace of productivity increases might reasonably apply to legal departments – one percent a year?
:
Updated:
A way to play games with metrics: leave out key elements of a percentage change
:
Updated:
Big difference in ratios of lawyers to paralegals for US and Canadian departments compared to the rest of the world
:
Updated:
The way we learn about law department operations: a succession of explanations conjectured, tested, and improved
:
Updated:
The Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and some software that embodies it
:
Updated:
Mitratech survey on law department technology – an invitation for you to take part and get the report
:
Updated:
Ten most interesting posts of July 2011
:
Updated:
List–en to lists: a scroll of ruminations on lists
:
Updated:
Internal budgets of legal departments, a catch-up metapost
:
Updated:
Final 14 (29 total) of various expenditures irregularly (or rarely) included in legal department budgets
:
Updated:
Aspen Directory of Corporate Counsel CD (2010) free for those who take the GCM Benchmark survey – a $1,495 value
:
Updated:
First 15 of various expenditures irregularly (or rarely) included in legal department budgets
:
Updated:
Room for thought about facilities and offices in law departments
:
Updated:
A book in German about law department management
:
Updated:
Anecdotes about a law department and its success at something leave much to be desired
:
Updated:
Social-choice theory, Arrow’s impossibility theorem, and group decision-making
:
Updated:
Four benefits when a general counsel serves on the board of another company
:
Updated:
Some things to do differently on the second iteration of a fixed-fee arrangement
:
Updated:
The total cost of resolution omits internal time by employees outside the legal department
:
Updated:
What about companies without law departments?
:
Updated:
Books recently cited on this blog
:
Updated:
Larger law departments more often use a major matter management system
:
Updated:
World’s largest benchmark survey at the halfway point – some data and findings
:
Updated:
Compared to other staff functions, legal departments have been unscathed by deep headcount reductions
:
Updated:
Managers, especially general counsel, should ask information-seeking questions and listen more
:
Updated:
Academic research and findings on an aspect of contract provisions – extensions and termination rights
:
Updated:
The productivity dilemma: standardize processes but then stiff progress
:
Updated:
Linex Systems, a search engine that focuses on law-related information
:
Updated:
Primary law firms compared to panels
:
Updated:
Eleven more advantages, in terms of management, for large law departments
:
Updated:
Example of a project fee for discovery, and thoughts on carve-outs and unit pricing
:
Updated:
Delegation implies down, assignment of work can be horizontal
:
Updated:
Everything in a law department has been designed: a fundamental concept
:
Updated:
Changes in median patent awards over 14 years to trolls and to active companies
:
Updated:
Many comments on this blog about alternative fee arrangements
:
Updated:
General counsel in 2009 survey said that law firms rarely bring up alternative billing arrangements
:
Updated:
Whether fixed-fee arrangements for numbers of lawsuits do or should reduce case cycle time
:
Updated:
In the teeth of the cost-cutting period (2009), one quarter of surveyed general counsel had only paid firms based on billable hours
:
Updated:
A portfolio view of “over-pay on some and underpay on others” unsettles some managers of outside counsel
:
Updated:
Carve-outs have two different meanings in fixed fee agreements
:
Updated:
The Oedipal appetite of new software and technology
:
Updated:
Law departments, embedded in their companies, enjoy corporate resources and probably therefore understate their own costs
:
Updated:
Matter management systems that have disappeared or merged
:
Updated:
Four more reasons for inactivity by general counsel regarding law firms costs, building on eight earlier reasons
:
Updated:
Lawyer equivalents for benchmarks need seasoning
:
Updated:
Are benchmark surveys skewed toward larger law departments or smaller ones?
:
Updated:
Weaknesses of teams when it comes to productivity and creativity
:
Updated:
Pieces of Eight: my posts with lists of eight
:
Updated:
My article on four trends that will improve benchmark reports honored by BigLaw
:
Updated:
As legal departments and clients both pare costs, which one exports more tasks to the other?
:
Updated:
Part LVIII in a series of collected metaposts embedded previously
:
Updated:
Modernism is out of date in terms of today’s law department design
:
Updated:
The teleological fallacy and our common delusion of control
:
Updated:
Data on high costs to obtain patents of small, high-technology companies
:
Updated:
If you travel extensively, your health will likely go to a bad place
:
Updated:
A firm that distributes the savings when a lawyer comes in under budget – yet a doubt
:
Updated:
Four online competitive bidding sites for law departments to procure external counsel
:
Updated:
Do you like this blog? Law departments deserve recognition on the ABA Blawg 100. To nominate this blog, here’s how
:
Updated:
Goal based training on software and its application in law departments
:
Updated:
Procurelaw.com: a website for competitive bids or instructions to panel firms
:
Updated:
For Novartis, a three-layered matrix and “enablers” who tie shared functions together
:
Updated:
The old standby is “industry,” but benchmark analyses could re-allocate participants by other drivers or distinctions
:
Updated:
Wish we had clarity on the number of lawyers per U.S. company with a law department
:
Updated:
Are in-house lawyers abysmal writers?
:
Updated:
Seek out law firms that have built or will develop knowledge bases relevant to your business
:
Updated:
Ideas, beliefs, and knowledge: the progression and an illustration for law departments
:
Updated:
More on spin-offs: ITT creates three new companies and law departments
:
Updated:
You can reject the false gold of “best practices” but still point out “bad practices”
:
Updated:
Four items on contract management: three software packages and a website
:
Updated:
More on lists, this time the posts that contain lists of seven
:
Updated:
Core-staff concept works better when matters aren’t under time pressure
:
Updated:
Ratios of applied-for patents to granted patents regarding cell phones
:
Updated:
Why not a maturity model for outside counsel management?
:
Updated:
Eight possible downsides of having legal experts on staff
:
Updated:
Rees Morrison’s Morsels #154: posts longa, morsels breva
:
Updated:
The international footprint of lawyers at huge Cargill matches the company’s breadth
:
Updated:
How common it is to replace losing trial counsel with a different appellate firm
:
Updated:
Most of what law departments do is reactive; proactive is a buzz word
:
Updated:
Why don’t I write a book on law department management rather than this blog?
:
Updated:
A statement not to be believed about widespread penetration of reverse auctions for legal services
:
Updated:
The pros and (more) cons of a law department that relies on accounts payable for its spending data
:
Updated:
A grab bag of posts on brown bag lunches
:
Updated:
Part LVII in a series of collected metaposts embedded previously
:
Updated:
Cliometrics and econometrics, so perhaps themismetrics for law departments
:
Updated:
Ten posts from June 2011 that struck me as the most interesting
:
Updated:
An estimate law departments in of publicly traded companies based on world market capitalization
:
Updated:
A list of advantages of lists
:
Updated:
Aristocratic history of law department management ignores the democratic staff
:
Updated:
Some arguments for why there are no best practices
:
Updated:
Seven difficulties that can face law departments that want to send services offshore
:
Updated:
Delegation and some head-scratching about the application of that term
:
Updated:
Ten myths, misconceptions and mistakes by general counsel about software
:
Updated:
Smaller law departments should make adjustments when comparing themselves to benchmarks dominated by large departments
:
Updated:
Well more than two-score providers of matter management systems
:
Updated:
Ten fundamental actions to improve operations in a law department
:
Updated:
Knowledge management counsel in Intel’s legal department
:
Updated:
The ultimate contingent fee for patent preparation and prosecution: no patent, no payment
:
Updated:
Three major trends credited with transforming the legal industry, and thoughts from the law department side
:
Updated:
The central limit theorem and why it might ring your statistical bells
:
Updated:
The greater a companys revenue the less it spends on legal expenses in proportion to that revenue despite having amasse
:
Updated:
Big international players in matter management systems
:
Updated:
Let’s not be economic determinists when we think of law department management
:
Updated:
Two more books on law departments, for a total of 35 found so far
:
Updated:
Emotions and goals of law departments; reasoned practices as choices of the means to get there
:
Updated:
In a competitive bid, a creative incumbent worries that the client may think: “Why have you waited?”
:
Updated:
Comparisons of the law department to other internal functions on employee morale
:
Updated:
A three-year term discourages low-balling to buy into a set fee arrangement
:
Updated:
Responses to comments about my list of 14 reasons why law departments don’t clobber their firms
:
Updated:
Data and thoughts on legal departments’ single most expensive matters
:
Updated:
The 90-minute cycle of alertness during the day and its effect on productivity
:
Updated:
Where do “matter management systems” end and other applications pick up?
:
Updated:
The most prominent terms in legal department management wither under logical positivism
:
Updated:
Functions reporting into the legal department of Brazilian companies
:
Updated:
All staff functions serving as input for business managers, why is law deemed special?
:
Updated:
Law department as intermediary between clients and law firms
:
Updated:
More attacks on litigation funders and some funders and their lobby identified
:
Updated:
Estimates of number of law departments in New Jersey, and extrapolation to the United States (26,000)
:
Updated:
Alert general counsel first to leap to protect Rupert Murdoch from charging protester
:
Updated:
The seven-point Likert Scale and some uses in law departments
:
Updated:
Some data on sites that have referred readers to this blog
:
Updated:
One view of the ideal background for a large law department’s administrator
:
Updated:
Fourteen reasons, ranked by legitimacy, why a law departments doesn’t bring the hammer down on its law firms
:
Updated:
Best practice references in recent posts – “but still it moves”
:
Updated:
One out of five field lawyers in huge insurer uses a digital voice recorders, but only every now and then
:
Updated:
Cutting observations about ascendant CFOs, in relation to mere-mortal CLOs
:
Updated:
Another data point on how many law departments there are globally – many more than 70,000
:
Updated:
We know data conversion across matter management systems, but for legacy contracts to contract management systems?
:
Updated:
Four features of outside counsel analytics at Liberty Mutual
:
Updated:
Treat arguments that oppose your views on management with the “principle of charity”
:
Updated:
Some reasons why benchmark survey participants one year do not take part the next year
:
Updated:
GDP figures, legal services spend and fees per inside lawyer on law firms don’t mesh
:
Updated:
When process components account for much of the activity in a function, even if partly legal it is generally outside the legal department
:
Updated:
4,000 law firms managed by one legal department!
:
Updated:
Patent litigation metrics from France, and the broader value of management metrics
:
Updated:
An Australian funder of litigation, IMF, publicly traded and with a long track record
:
Updated:
More cloud law: another online repository of free or low-cost corporate legal guidance, LawPivot
:
Updated:
“Legal departments are always viewed as roadblocks”
:
Updated:
Salary differentials for Canadian general counsel who are director level compared to executive level
:
Updated:
Take part now for Release 3.0 in September! Release 2.0 of the General Counsel Metrics Benchmark Survey went out last week
:
Updated:
The ethical line between RFPs that exploit good ideas and those that respect the proposers’ intellectual capital
:
Updated:
Get my July 2011 Newsletter of 10 most viewed and clicked on posts of previous 30-days
:
Updated:
Non-lawyer staff at Rosetta Stone’s legal department
:
Updated:
No gatekeepers internally or at law firms: clients should go straight to the most knowledgeable lawyer
:
Updated:
The single most flagrant obstacle to improvement in law department operations
:
Updated:
Two methods, somewhat brutal, to elicit views from everyone at a meeting
:
Updated:
Lower cost option with women lawyers who want project assignments
:
Updated:
Ranges of salaries for Canadian in-house lawyers
:
Updated:
Patterns evident in the second year of “ten best posts of the month”
:
Updated:
Compensation data for Canadian in-house lawyers suggests mostly small departments
:
Updated:
Five software packages that help law departments with specialized needs
:
Updated:
Practice support professionals (PSLs): supported by several law departments for their mutual benefit?
:
Updated:
An acquisition of a service provider for in invoice pre-checking (eBilling Hub)
:
Updated:
Ten standout posts from May 2011
:
Updated:
A dubious comparative metric: ratio of partner time to associate time
:
Updated:
Seasonality of invoices from law firms
:
Updated:
Tool-box management and its principles
:
Updated:
The inherent back-and-forth grumbling between HQ lawyers and business unit lawyers
:
Updated:
500+ different kinds of hammers and the specificity of practices – no best practices
:
Updated:
A dozen practices to improve how your law department handles contracts
:
Updated:
At what number of lawyers in a department does it make sense to create a third level of reporting?
:
Updated:
Billing with task codes – a reprise, but still just a trickle
:
Updated:
PowerPoint in law departments – too often neither power nor pointed
:
Updated:
Countervailing pressures of a company lawyer’s longevity and lock-in
:
Updated:
“I never met a post I didn’t like” (Will the Blogger Rogers on metaposts)
:
Updated:
Most firms in survey say that law departments ask for UTBMS code billing but give no guidance based on codes
:
Updated:
Eight reasons why companies hire their first internal lawyer, in order of likely influence
:
Updated:
Rees Morrison’s Morsels #153: posts longa, morsels breva
:
Updated:
Part LVI in a series of collected metaposts embedded previously
:
Updated:
Commercial contracts are so fundamental to the work of law departments, here are my eleven metaposts on contracts
:
Updated:
Why is the general counsel the “guardian of the company’s reputation and integrity”?
:
Updated:
Trial presentation technology
:
Updated:
Law departments don’t educate firms about their selection of task-based codes
:
Updated:
As a general counsel, try a “walk-around” to find out what your key clients think about you and the department
:
Updated:
Survey finds that required use of UTBMS code makes only a modest difference in firm billing behavior
:
Updated:
Columbia Law School and the Council on Litigation Management collaborate to create Certified Litigation Management Professionals
:
Updated:
Should you expect your law firms to scrub their invoices electronically to match your guidelines?
:
Updated:
Reflections on the value of an effort to match legal risks to corporate key objectives
:
Updated:
Unusual visibility into some aspects of the large litigation group at WellPoint
:
Updated:
Survey data shows wider variety of UTBMS litigation codes used than one might think on a typical invoice
:
Updated:
Quite a listing of legal department technology used in Brazil
:
Updated:
Three thresholds for what kinds of cases a law department will handle e-discovery itself
:
Updated:
38 retweets of posts from this blog in the last month by 17 people!
:
Updated:
Benford’s law of digits and their frequency, with an application to invoice review
:
Updated:
Decision aids that vary from the traditional Franklin T
:
Updated:
Heuristics and their role when we have to make a decision
:
Updated:
A law department can draw on a law firm that has combined several service providers into an integrated e-discovery team
:
Updated:
Several comments on an actual budget-based fee agreement
:
Updated:
Patent licensing workload depends in part whether your patents are “essential” to an industry standard
:
Updated:
Rees Morrison’s Morsels #152: posts longa, morsels breva
:
Updated:
A wiki for corporate legal forms – a forum to annotate and improve free agreements online
:
Updated:
Barring a blowup, law department operations don’t concern the Board of Directors
:
Updated:
“Metrics tell you what happened; modeling tells you what might happen”
:
Updated:
Equivocal comments about in-house lawyers in India and their attorney-client privilege
:
Updated:
SharePoint applications in four law departments: blog, directory, invoices and dashboards
:
Updated:
The core role of the legal department regarding contracts
:
Updated:
The likelihood that blogs by in-house counsel often link to each other
:
Updated:
Claims of impressive savings from an online system
:
Updated:
Five sources within your company of people who can help you with statistical analyses
:
Updated:
Group wisdom and conclusions derived through the Delphi technique
:
Updated:
Explanatory sciences and design sciences
:
Updated:
About a 50/50 split of whether staff counsel report to claims or to the general counsel
:
Updated:
Software to help handle contracts – recent references [metapost contract software II 12]
:
Updated:
In benchmark survey, law departments that gave no information on matter management software had fairly typical legal spend to revenue
:
Updated:
For a group of insurance companies, litigation in the past 12 months dropped or held steady
:
Updated:
Good reasons to keep some non-primary firms in the mix
:
Updated:
Mostly law departments choose the best firm they can find, but sometimes pressures from three sides disrupt their choice – my article
:
Updated:
A list of the advantages of lists to organize yourself, set priorities, and cope with overload
:
Updated:
More than a score of practices law departments follow regarding contracts – recent references on this blog
:
Updated:
Posts on claims management
:
Updated:
Total legal spending by users of matter management systems favors the big eight systems
:
Updated:
Is the chief measure of a law department’s value the revenue its lawyers generate? No
:
Updated:
Do you believe this ever happened or could happen now, as an alternative fee arrangement?
:
Updated:
Certification to keep budgets for major matters realistic and live
:
Updated:
Thoughts about two common KPIs in patent management
:
Updated:
Matter management system vendors cited the most so far in the General Counsel Metrics benchmark survey
:
Updated:
An attack on the influence of third-party financing in major litigation
:
Updated:
The value of services delivered by a law firm will never be epistemically objective
:
Updated:
“A flat fee is not an alternative fee, it is a budget!” Come again?
:
Updated:
What is a 360° review process for a law department’s outside counsel?
:
Updated:
More observations on value demonstrated by law departments, from survey results
:
Updated:
The P I E theory of successful careers is not even half-baked
:
Updated:
Titles at Allstate for its lawyers don’t include the usual ones
:
Updated:
Three reasons why law departments don’t change their ways of working with external firms
:
Updated:
Lean Six Sigma tools, courtesy of Seyfarth Shaw’s Lisa Damon
:
Updated:
Part LV in a series of collected metaposts embedded previously
:
Updated:
A proposal by a group of large law firms to give law departments of “sophisticated clients” more regulatory freedom
:
Updated:
Video-conference town halls for a widely-dispersed law department
:
Updated:
At UPS, far beyond dress codes to rules on munchies, mustaches, and messes
:
Updated:
Even with a panel of preferred firms, it can be hard to find an expert in a narrow issue
:
Updated:
Law departments of many companies face increasing demands for IP services
:
Updated:
Deliver Board materials to Directors on IPads!
:
Updated:
Let’s hear it, but modestly, for another blogging general counsel, Christine Jones of Go Daddy!
:
Updated:
Advice from a quartet of former-GCs, courtesy of an innovative law firm
:
Updated:
A consequence of convergence, not just unhappy lawyers but also disgruntled clients
:
Updated:
Low-cost, set retainer for advisory calls in specialized areas of law
:
Updated:
Characteristics of “traditional” compared to “proactive” law departments
:
Updated:
Number of pages in statutes as a working proxy for legal complexity, see Dodd-Frankenstein
:
Updated:
Two broad narrative themes in writings and presentations about law departments
:
Updated:
Knowledge management notes from The Williams Companies
:
Updated:
An ugly side to powerful general counsel – squash competent lawyers so they stay and help you look better
:
Updated:
Ten posts from April that most captured my fancy
:
Updated:
“Typically, law firms come to us about new lawsuits faster than we go to them”
:
Updated:
Rees Morrison’s Morsels #151: posts longa, morsels breva
:
Updated:
Should law firms be permitted to bill the time of their project managers?
:
Updated:
The mischievous phrasing of “save up to XX percent”
:
Updated:
A tune-up of your existing matter management system, rather than replacement
:
Updated:
Internal and external billing rates, combined with the ratio of internal to external spend, suggests one-to-one lawyer hours
:
Updated:
More on ratios of matters handled by outside counsel
:
Updated:
Consider ranking the law firms you regularly retain by your buying-power leverage
:
Updated:
Protection for law firms in a fixed fee: ceiling on fixes and switch over to hourly when hit
:
Updated:
Value generated for a law department by a firm or vendor ought to me more than “working closely with the department”
:
Updated:
Sometimes law departments may have to track time to comply with regulatory obligations
:
Updated:
Further thoughts on partners vs. consulting conduction satisfaction interviews of law departments
:
Updated:
Insights into some legal department-related procurement practices at EBay
:
Updated:
“Reports” from a matter management system come in several flavors of sophistication
:
Updated:
Specialized software that helps a law department prepare audit report materials
:
Updated:
What types of questions do law firms ask most frequently when their e-billing invoice is rejected?
:
Updated:
Knowledge management efforts work best at the practice group level
:
Updated:
Webinar by Rees Morrison on benchmark metrics, courtesy of Mitratetch: June 16th at 1PM Eastern
:
Updated:
The demise of early payment discounts
:
Updated:
Big differences possible in effective billing rates of outside counsel, by type of matter
:
Updated:
When processing e-bills for you, what common questions do law firms run into?
:
Updated:
A recalculation of effective billing rates using the concept of trimmed means
:
Updated:
Benchmarks for law departments and 13 more metaposts on that topic
:
Updated:
My most downloaded article: value delivered by in-house counsel – why the surge of interest?
:
Updated:
You can end up paying more for the same services even with a rate freeze in place
:
Updated:
What are the considerations for when an ECA should be completed?
:
Updated:
Comments regarding some of the most common third-party report writers for matter management systems
:
Updated:
General counsel vulnerability when CEO changes, and some data on CEO departure rates
:
Updated:
Elegance of a solution for e-discovery makes no difference and two other eyebrow raisers
:
Updated:
How important it is for a general counsel to have a wise head to turn to on very difficult or stressful decisions
:
Updated:
A contracting and negotiating guide of 150 pages from Aerojet
:
Updated:
Whether to request time records even when the law firm has agreed to handle matters on a fixed fee
:
Updated:
Not a pirated tape of Rees Morrison, in costume, on benchmarks – check it out before it goes viral with a vengeance!
:
Updated:
Legal concerns are not a corporate core function at the top of LGE
:
Updated:
Add more precision to your estimates, which clients like, and follow the three steps of Kraft Foods
:
Updated:
One out of three matters handled by a law department has outside counsel involved?
:
Updated:
Four good recommendations about how to get along well with the CEO and Board
:
Updated:
The Matthew Effect, such as to describe why some excellent partners accumulate even more good clients
:
Updated:
With broken pottery or otherwise, cut back on the least productive processes
:
Updated:
Not sure I agree that an invoice is a shrewd marketing tool by a law firm
:
Updated:
How to help your law firms understand your business better
:
Updated:
A clear description of the meaning of margin of error (sampling error)
:
Updated:
Shouldn’t the ACC specify why it chooses certain vendors as its exclusive Alliance members?
:
Updated:
What is the allure to general counsel of a day packed with short meetings with law firm partners?
:
Updated:
When negotiating fixed fees, do law departments tend to describe matters as more simple than they are and then pressure for more services?
:
Updated:
My latest article, on the value generated by in-house legal teams
:
Updated:
Consultants who interview law departments on behalf of law firms and some thoughts on pros and cons compared to a partner who interviews
:
Updated:
Beyond features and functions of software, the complementary attributes of a package become more important
:
Updated:
Collective inactivity because of personal cost benefit analysis stymies many departmental initiatives
:
Updated:
The Condorcet Jury Theorem and the wisdom of informed groups
:
Updated:
Law departments should learn from “post-vivos” – why was some action a success
:
Updated:
Debilitation in deliberation: groups suffer from some major weaknesses
:
Updated:
Three years to learn e-discovery software and set up a team, and then the person leaves!
:
Updated:
Structure and benchmark observations about Viacom’s legal department
:
Updated:
Why do all general counsel think their law department is unique?
:
Updated:
Senior management responsibility for FCPA compliance programs – not the GC?
:
Updated:
Yet another blog by a former in-house lawyer [metapost blogs by in-house lawyers 16 ]
:
Updated:
The egocentric bias, whereby we think others mostly think and act like we do
:
Updated:
General counsel should be alert to the cost of information requested by them
:
Updated:
It’s so hard for lawyers to learn from mistakes, and five reasons why
:
Updated:
A spectrum of reasons for failure, three of which are laudable
:
Updated:
The calculated number of people or firms to interview to assure an efficient choice of the best
:
Updated:
Set requirements for matter budgets that vary according to the practice area
:
Updated:
Coming someday, law departments will invest in chatbots to guide clients?
:
Updated:
Doubts about general counsel serving on another company’s Board of Directors
:
Updated:
Thoughts about time frames of budgets on matters and two alternatives to the calendar
:
Updated:
Some dotted lines in decentralized law departments are thicker and closer than others
:
Updated:
Loss of lawyer collaboration but gain in client support if lawyers are scattered in small offices
:
Updated:
Liquidated damages enforceable in Oklahoma for fixed-fee arrangement with law firm
:
Updated:
Delegated authorities are the formal, written embodiments of power in companies
:
Updated:
Ten posts from March 2011 to set you cogitating
:
Updated:
Consolidation of litigation at Sunoco under a chief litigation counsel and some practices
:
Updated:
Would a law department be persuaded to try a law firm that brought business to the company?
:
Updated:
Diversity asked about in RFPs was virtually irrelevant in selection decisions six years ago
:
Updated:
Survey questions that gave five choices and aggregated the results
:
Updated:
Organizational socialization – getting a new senior attorney up to speed successfully
:
Updated:
The extraordinary costs and disruption of a general counsel’s departure
:
Updated:
Rees Morrison’s Morsels #149: posts longa, morsels breva
:
Updated:
Sorry, it’s perfectly fine if a firm sets a fee based on estimated hours of work
:
Updated:
Board of Directors’ survey puts compliance and regulation low on the list of concerns to devote more time to
:
Updated:
To add to a team is much easier for a department that hires a lawyer than to carve out a new role
:
Updated:
An uncontrollable budget-buster, an independent investigation of some internal actions
:
Updated:
Three animadversions regarding RFPs, and my counter-points
:
Updated:
Law department differences between “tradable” and “non-tradable” sectors
:
Updated:
Should a general counsel be concerned about “capture” of its primary firm?
:
Updated:
Regarding fees anticipated for expensive projects, the CFO as bad cop and the GC as good cop
:
Updated:
Show some spine, in-house counsel! You run the show when you retain M&A counsel!
:
Updated:
Have you stopped sending reports that people have stopped reading?
:
Updated:
State percentages as natural frequencies rather than percentages or decimals
:
Updated:
Four quotes on metrics and three pithy comments on each
:
Updated:
First release this year of global benchmark report has 245 participating law departments
:
Updated:
Alternative Firm Arrangements surpass Alternative Fee Arrangements for cost control
:
Updated:
Benchmark surveys probably attract disproportionately more respondents from centralized law departments
:
Updated:
GC compensation and legal team cost per hour as pointers toward value of law departments
:
Updated:
Addenda to the post on Nero AG’s legal wiki
:
Updated:
The balance between making legal services and buying them changes outside the home country
:
Updated:
Globaloney – exaggeration of the influence of global trade on law departments
:
Updated:
Join a free webinar by Lumen Legal on May 5th to discuss General Counsel Metrics Release 1.0 findings on benchmarks
:
Updated:
Why we should care about the history of law department management
:
Updated:
Sponsored competition to study and make recommendations regarding litigation portfolios of five global companies
:
Updated:
Lecorpio and its suite of law department management software
:
Updated:
Ranges of statistical error and decisions by law department teams
:
Updated:
LinkedIn Maps illustrate how to delve into a law department’s network of law firms
:
Updated:
Revenue from patent licenses: how can we learn estimated amounts and can we benchmark them?
:
Updated:
The license fee for software may be much less than labor and implementation costs
:
Updated:
A method to select among multiple law firms, software packages, or whatever (but beware a risk)
:
Updated:
Being mean to arithmetic means, and the insights from geometric means
:
Updated:
Excellent explanation of a law department that makes good use of a wiki
:
Updated:
Doubts about survey data on the typical number of US law firms retained by law departments of various sizes
:
Updated:
The innate talents of lawyers, their acquired talents, and their organizational capabilities – an overview
:
Updated:
My article on ten truths about innovation by law departments and a solicitation of you
:
Updated:
Part LIV in a series of collected metaposts embedded previously
:
Updated:
Like private practitioners, perhaps half of all US law departments are single behind the shingle?
:
Updated:
Even if mental agility declines with age, veterans’ intimate knowledge of the company compensates
:
Updated:
A star partner at one firm will probably lose luster at a new firm, so transfer work with them cautiously
:
Updated:
Chief legal officers mostly complete the General Counsel Metrics benchmark survey, or sometimes they request a direct report to do so
:
Updated:
Weak ties in your network may be weaker than I previously stated
:
Updated:
My first year of columns – 26 of them – for InsideCounsel Exclusives: Morrison on Metrics
:
Updated:
Two decades ago, strict budgets, competitive bids, and contract attorneys publicized as cost-control methods
:
Updated:
Security considerations regarding access by law firms to your matter management system
:
Updated:
Exotic software for corporate governance, corporate secretarial, and publicly-traded functions
:
Updated:
Rees Morrison’s Morsels #148: posts longa, morsels breva
:
Updated:
Some fissures in the comparison of internal fully-loaded rates to average rates of outside counsel
:
Updated:
Motorola Solutions’ huge spinoff law department and the former secondee who leads it
:
Updated:
Full-page ad in the Times shames class action law firms that dropped suit
:
Updated:
Revenue distribution from the first 215 participants in the 2011 General Counsel Metrics global benchmark survey – take the survey yourself!
:
Updated:
An interruption log instead of a time tracking log might help you become more productive
:
Updated:
An important learning tip – plunge in for a second or third time even if though it may feel unproductive
:
Updated:
Hidden legal costs, including capitalized legal expenses
:
Updated:
What do we mean by value produced by in-house lawyers?
:
Updated:
Potential ways surveyors might obtain data on settlements
:
Updated:
The rarity of lawyers who transfer out of the law department to a business role
:
Updated:
More documents and guidance will be free on the Internet, which will help in-house lawyers and their budgets
:
Updated:
1,800 chargeable hours per in-house lawyer may be too high outside the US
:
Updated:
A strict position taken regarding changes of staff on matters; one month’s notice and absorbs five days of costs
:
Updated:
Several reasons why settlement data rarely appears as benchmarks
:
Updated:
Reductionism fails if it is the privileged methodology for theorists of law department management
:
Updated:
If a historiographer looked at outside guidelines over the past four decades
:
Updated:
A thickly settled community of posts on settlements
:
Updated:
Innovative litigation CLE for in-house lawyers offered free and online from Trial.com
:
Updated:
Clever and easy mathematics to figure out how many items were not found in discovery, research, review, or other search
:
Updated:
A second set of ten posts on columns I have written for InsideCounsel
:
Updated:
A harbinger of legal information and guidance delivered by mobile apps
:
Updated:
North to Alaska with a stop for posts on law departments in Canada
:
Updated:
Two disciplines that bring new perspectives on how law departments function: micro-history and ethnography
:
Updated:
Rees Morrison’s Morsels #147: posts longa, morsels breva
:
Updated:
Three powers of metrics: to help analyze, explain and persuade
:
Updated:
From Interact last year, Cisco’s law department on “mission-critical” services
:
Updated:
Points from a description of Rockwell Automation’s matter management experience
:
Updated:
Epistemology and what we “know” about past practices in legal department management
:
Updated:
Part LIII in a series of collected metaposts embedded previously
:
Updated:
Augmented decision-making where lawyers take the yoke with software
:
Updated:
Legal intensity and the competitive level in an industry
:
Updated:
A hyperpost on the dozen components of managerial power
:
Updated:
15 companies that fund litigation at a conference on this niche industry
:
Updated:
“Little bets” as a way to make steady, creative progress to solve problems
:
Updated:
“Intellectual tourism” and a blogger’s risk
:
Updated:
Automatic linkages between email and contracts related to the email
:
Updated:
Whether task-based billing codes do better than automated bill review software
:
Updated:
The nine posts of February 2011 (it was a short month) that addressed the deepest topics
:
Updated:
What should a general counsel do if a much-relied on partner calls to say she is leaving her law firm?
:
Updated:
Ranked list of top-ten trademark services providers
:
Updated:
When lawyers in-house move to the commercial side, who encourages that?
:
Updated:
A progress curve and its formula to describe how productivity improves for law departments
:
Updated:
Services provided in-house must have climbed the value curve
:
Updated:
Tree-mapping to represent complicated data sets
:
Updated:
Interactive visualization for spending and staffing data – the look of the future for law departments
:
Updated:
Managing the In-House Legal Function, a new book from the International In-House Counsel Journal
:
Updated:
A dozen components of a general counsel’s power over subordinates and limits on them
:
Updated:
A quota system for in-house lawyers to obtain client satisfaction e-feedback forms
:
Updated:
A knowledge-based theory for legal departments, and its link to transaction cost economics
:
Updated:
A metaphor for in-house lawyers – oil not fuel
:
Updated:
To tame some of the wild, tacit knowledge of lawyers: guidelines, checklists and annotations
:
Updated:
Three years of the Law Department Operations Survey, more than a dozen posts on its findings
:
Updated:
Notes toward theories and systems of effective law department management
:
Updated:
Data on matter management systems of large law departments – quite a few with no system or a customized one
:
Updated:
Where there’s much smoke from litigation there’s probably fiery profits, growth and change
:
Updated:
Internal fully-loaded costs to clients of lawyers per hour – another update of posts on an important metric
:
Updated:
Ratios of legal spend to the ongoing costs of two kinds of software that track it
:
Updated:
Well on the way to the milestone of 1,000 law departments in a benchmark survey
:
Updated:
Not a good mission to “try and do as much legal work as possible in-house”
:
Updated:
Not too hard for law department administrators to keep up with law department technology
:
Updated:
Are in-house counsel the bait for conference promoters?
:
Updated:
A starter post on document meta-tags, taxonomies and ontologies – pretty exciting, huh?
:
Updated:
Some connections between knowledge and power regarding law departments
:
Updated:
Another potential assignment for a general counsel: run the quality functions
:
Updated:
“Only two essential problems in managing a law department”
:
Updated:
High-level managers of other lawyers have to learn to forsake complexity for simplicity
:
Updated:
Recent data on the chain of command for law department operation heads
:
Updated:
Can a law department estimate the cost of litigation-related time by employees outside the department?
:
Updated:
Wondering about dramatic data on litigation costs in relation to profits
:
Updated:
Extreme Value Theory may have something to offer managers of law departments
:
Updated:
Everyone thinks the U.S. is the most litigious, but some data suggests we rank in the middle
:
Updated:
The style of a question robs its answers of much meaning (plans for matter management systems)
:
Updated:
Might I propose the first inductees into the Hall of Fame of Law Department GCs for Management?
:
Updated:
The ideal of “philosophical management” for general counsel
:
Updated:
The biggest challenge law department administrators see is to bring about change
:
Updated:
My InsideCounsel column on changes in benchmarks by the same companies over two years
:
Updated:
Four observations about dysfunctional teams that likely apply to lawyer teams
:
Updated:
Reactionary-conservative-middle of the road-liberal-radical: political labels to describe views on outside counsel management
:
Updated:
Part LII of a collection of embedded metaposts, perhaps a florilegium!
:
Updated:
Web apps for in-house counsel will appear in the next few years enriched by HTML5
:
Updated:
Use the coefficient of variation to compare dispersion expressed in different units of measurement
:
Updated:
Toast to posts on Anheuser-Busch, InBev, and the merger
:
Updated:
An example of why industry benchmarks provide by far the most useful insights
:
Updated:
Much work on this blog concerning lawyer workloads
:
Updated:
My Of Counsel article on new-style benchmarks, which three are most important, and a law firm perspective
:
Updated:
Government regulations permeate the workload of a law department
:
Updated:
Law departments may enjoy some budget relief if European patent costs drop dramatically
:
Updated:
Cost of regulations as a way to convey the value of a law department
:
Updated:
A view and some estimates on market concentration of spend in the US legal industry
:
Updated:
“Trusted legal advisor” – an overused cliché that in truth has rare application
:
Updated:
Three views of challenges for inside lawyers who purport to “manage” much more experienced outside counsel
:
Updated:
Online, a bizarre description of legal departments
:
Updated:
Badgering clients if you ask them for written feedback on many matters completed
:
Updated:
A checklist, with five priorities, to assess the effectiveness of pitches by law firms
:
Updated:
My upcoming panel at the InsideCounsel SuperConference, on metrics, benchmarking and management of legal departments
:
Updated:
A cloud of choices when law departments consider cloud computing
:
Updated:
Software and other technology used by large German law departments
:
Updated:
Along with legal oversight, Anheuser-Busch InBev’s GC manages “corporate affairs”
:
Updated:
Broad statement about the decisions made by a board of directors regarding law and compliance
:
Updated:
Total cost of ownership (TCO) as an important consideration for law departments when they invest in software
:
Updated:
The Möbius strip of hire the firm or hire the lawyer
:
Updated:
Two bells have to ring for significant change to happen between a law department and one of its firms
:
Updated:
Free invoice review and management insights through an online “game”
:
Updated:
Anything good, done by law departments to excess, withers
:
Updated:
Come hear about benchmarks on my panel at Mitratech’s Interact 2011
:
Updated:
To measure how timely (too quickly or too slowly) corporate clients call upon their internal lawyers
:
Updated:
Revenue leakage from long-term contracts and what it suggests for law departments
:
Updated:
Another general counsel’s blog, Rich Baer’s Reliance on Counsel
:
Updated:
On the possible deleterious effects of knowledge management systems in law departments
:
Updated:
Smart lawyers aren’t by virtue of that creative lawyers, or even likely to be
:
Updated:
An alternative to department-wide, big and formal initiatives to give feedback to law firms
:
Updated:
Three observations based on Cytec Industries and its legal services meetings and staff
:
Updated:
Exhaustive contracts raise risks that broad-stroke agreements do not
:
Updated:
The four most important attributes of an in-house lawyer, but unbalanced emphasis
:
Updated:
Your choice of a law firm partly rests on how it embodies what you think about yourself?
:
Updated:
Questions to ask to find out whether a practice group of a law firm will benefit your department
:
Updated:
Brands of law firms – doubtful thoughts after a Georgetown Law Center conference
:
Updated:
A view that companies deal more with law firm as a whole than with individual partners, and why
:
Updated:
Some benchmark metrics from French legal departments
:
Updated:
Career path blockage exacerbated by adaptation and relative comparisons
:
Updated:
Client satisfaction may rise with seniority of clients and distort company-wide impressions
:
Updated:
Law firm panels were common among French law departments, fee arrangements less so
:
Updated:
A law firm’s prestige might turn on a pleasure center of the brain
:
Updated:
More research on what law department lawyers say they value when they select firms
:
Updated:
Similar amounts spent per in-house lawyer by German and US law departments, and the same ratio
:
Updated:
Legal department consigned to “process-oriented” and thus dull
:
Updated:
Jingoism and braggadocio about proclaimed superiority of management in US law departments
:
Updated:
An unusual example of experts that are not lawyers (13 engineers) in the litigation group of a law department
:
Updated:
Spin-offs shrink law departments, and The Williams Companies dropped by two-thirds
:
Updated:
More evidence of this being the Decade of Data
:
Updated:
Do general counsel care about “thought leadership” by law firms?
:
Updated:
The access costs of knowledge, a concept useful to those who manage in-house legal staff
:
Updated:
Early findings from 142 in GCM’s 2011 benchmark survey regarding 30+ matter management systems
:
Updated:
Surveys should ask not for ranges when collecting numbers, but actual numbers
:
Updated:
Does compliance really get involved in 33 areas, as a recent survey asks?
:
Updated:
Thoughts on why the ALA doesn’t have many members who are law department administrators
:
Updated:
A methodological flaw of surveys that ask for scores on a scale
:
Updated:
Huge productivity increases for most in-house lawyers in the past decades
:
Updated:
For professionals, boundaries more than bureaucracy – a very important management style difference for clever workers
:
Updated:
A contrast in law department styles: close Gemeinschaft or distant Gesellschaft
:
Updated:
The ratio of meeting time to working time
:
Updated:
A third newly-found blog by a General Counsel
:
Updated:
An addendum to reflections on structure in Indra’s law department
:
Updated:
Cost per hour in Germany matches that of the US for internal lawyers
:
Updated:
A large number of competitors covered in the matter management and e-billing arena, and more probably in the wings
:
Updated:
From January, the ten most interesting posts according to their poster (me)
:
Updated:
Dramatic increase in responsibility of general counsel over two decades according to the Harvard Business Review, with three of my own observations
:
Updated:
Yet another blog hosted by an in-house lawyer, the anonymous Mr. Bizzle
:
Updated:
Article predicts general counsel will increasingly be chosen from in-house lawyers, not from law firms
:
Updated:
Rees Morrison’s Morsels #146: posts longa, morsels breva
:
Updated:
Paul Lippe of Legal OnRamp: To save costs “Make no small plans.”
:
Updated:
Welcome to another general counsel who blogs, Melanie Hatton
:
Updated:
The overlap of law departments that use matter management software and those that learn from benchmarks – my latest InsideCounsel column
:
Updated:
A report’s prediction of large players entering the matter management and e-billing arena
:
Updated:
Areas of law and what portion is handled in-house by German and U.S. lawyers
:
Updated:
Three glosses on a good post in support of $1,000 an hour partners
:
Updated:
Lawyers per billion and per thousand employees in large German law departments
:
Updated:
Hyperion Research’s excellent report on matter management and e-billing
:
Updated:
Paralegals and other staff per lawyer in law departments of Fortune 150 German companies
:
Updated:
A shocking finding about how to stimulate creativity: noninvasive brain stimulation
:
Updated:
Nearly thirty percent higher costs per lawyer in decentralized German law departments
:
Updated:
Only a small percentage of chip patents end up in infringement enforcement
:
Updated:
Data from 2008 on the reporting lines of German general counsel
:
Updated:
Trying hard to be objective about attacks on the objectivity of inside lawyers
:
Updated:
Three unusual expenditures that, still, ought to be folded into fully loaded costs
:
Updated:
Measures of variability in data Part 2: standard deviations
:
Updated:
Why not publicly announced cash awards for innovative management practices useful for law departments?
:
Updated:
Technology’s effects on law department lawyers, exaggerated short term but under-appreciated long term
:
Updated:
Special offer for Fortune 500-size law departments: an analysis of 95 in the General Counsel Metrics benchmark survey: some findings
:
Updated:
CLO bloggers behind firewalls: general counsel who keep in touch with an internal blog
:
Updated:
A look back six years ago, the founding of Law Department Management Blog
:
Updated:
Network theory applied to law departments, my latest article just published
:
Updated:
Teleology when general counsel revise history to describe how they smoothly reached their current management pinnacle
:
Updated:
Measures of variabBeyond averages and medians, general counsel should understand statistical ways to describe the variability and distribution of data. One uses the statistical term ility in law department data: variance as a statistical descriptive tool
:
Updated:
In-house lawyers and general counsel who host their own blog – a collection of 11
:
Updated:
Part LI of a collection of embedded metaposts
:
Updated:
The tenure of the general counsel does not relate to cost control: years in the position shows no association with total legal spending
:
Updated:
My February Rees’s Pieces just went to 350+ subscribers – you’re welcome to get a copy and subscribe at no cost
:
Updated:
Decentralized law departments, not knowing full staff and spending figures, may slightly lower published benchmarks as compared to actuals
:
Updated:
Consider joining my LinkedIn group, Law Department Management, and its 510 members
:
Updated:
Commercial definitions of industries may obscure more fundamental legal differences between groups of companies
:
Updated:
Small vendors (90%) dominate in the legal cottage industry, so rewards and risks increase
:
Updated:
The structure of a law department and its operations reflects a design evolved over time, based loosely on fundamental ideologies
:
Updated:
“Innovation platforms” and matter management systems
:
Updated:
Market capitalization per lawyer: its association with total legal spending per unit of revenue and numbers of lawyers
:
Updated:
Comparison of 2010 benchmark survey respondents and US Fortune 200 industry distribution
:
Updated:
From US manufacturers, about one lawyer per 1,000 employees but barely any association with total legal spending
:
Updated:
Law departments of common carriers likely have different legal footprints
:
Updated:
The Kronos effect and some applications regarding law departments: eat what you kill with a different spin!
:
Updated:
Hats off and welcome to Tim Bratton, a GC voice new to the legal blogosphere
:
Updated:
It’s a skewed sample of management practices we draw on — survival bias warps our understanding
:
Updated:
Four notes on good methodology for a survey of law departments
:
Updated:
Bizarre, but the largest law firms bring in more revenue than many (most?) of their corporate clients
:
Updated:
For law departments, first-adopter advantages and disadvantages and the follower’s dilemma
:
Updated:
World’s largest law firm institutes minimum fee requirements for new clients
:
Updated:
Various methods of “voting,” such as for which law firms will be invited onto a panel
:
Updated:
Fifteen significant management developments over 150 years relating to law departments and their use of outside counsel
:
Updated:
Welcome to LeadingInHouse.com, another blog on law departments and specifically about coaching and leadership
:
Updated:
Digraphs to help understand and quantify a process
:
Updated:
Skewed and leptokurtic distributions of law department size
:
Updated:
SuperConnect blog book review
:
Updated:
Five techniques to help you solve problems that could use some creativity
:
Updated:
Information spillover as an advantage that grows with increasing size of law departments
:
Updated:
Eight suggestions for your department to learn more about your client’s business
:
Updated:
Evaluate law firms and the grade them on their defensiveness!
:
Updated:
Management ideas for general counsel can be expressed in terms of set theory notation
:
Updated:
Average in-house costs of a group of very large US companies stayed level for nine years?
:
Updated:
Equations on this blog help us understand: Eq. = insight
:
Updated:
Fortune’s 100 best companies to work for, but the top ones have law departments with low management profiles
:
Updated:
Indices of all kinds of aspects of law department operations
:
Updated:
Inherent sex differences do not explain the improving situation of women in the ranks of senior in-house lawyers, talent does
:
Updated:
If the costs of lawyers have risen have risen at the same rate as other artisan-type professional services, where’s the beef?
:
Updated:
Ten posts of December 2010 with the most crunchy ideas
:
Updated:
Huge praise for in-house tax lawyers and accountants at General Electric
:
Updated:
Rees Morrison’s Morsels #145: posts longa, morsels
:
Updated:
GCM benchmark survey starts strong – half the respondents so far are new
:
Updated:
More data on compliance and reporting to the general counsel
:
Updated:
From South Africa, a document assembly offering (XpressDox)
:
Updated:
Follow the money, and in-house lawyers do – to online sites that give data on salaries
:
Updated:
For web surfers, a surfeit of sites for those who want to improve their writing
:
Updated:
Data from law firms about helpdesk support probably matches causes of law department calls
:
Updated:
Claimed in-sourcing of legal work to cope with cost pressure needs support from benchmark metrics
:
Updated:
Three observations about the law department of Silver Lake Technology Management
:
Updated:
Will there someday soon be an app cottage industry for matter management systems?
:
Updated:
Even if competitive selections aren’t pre-ordained, how often do they even bless a change?
:
Updated:
A heterogeneity index and what it can tell about distributions of law firms retained, minority staff, software usage and more
:
Updated:
Cognitive entrenchment, a term that describes the rigidity that may encrust expertise
:
Updated:
Data on the importance of headhunters and some projections about the law departments they like to draw from
:
Updated:
Another role of national coordinating counsel: to help pick which lawsuits to take to trial
:
Updated:
Free-riders and rent-seekers in law departments
:
Updated:
More work for the IP department if the company, like Fujitsu, publishes its IP strategy
:
Updated:
Four ways that EADS encourages patentable research
:
Updated:
IP teams of French companies can report to any of several different departments, led by law departments
:
Updated:
Brainstorming replaced by creativity techniques based more on neuroscience
:
Updated:
Value delivered by a law department as suggested by the number of “economically significant” regulations dealt with
:
Updated:
20 jargon giants in-house lawyers should shudder at and shun
:
Updated:
Perfectionism pulverizes productivity – good quality in the shortest time and least cost is the goal
:
Updated:
Some topics from a profile of the general counsel of Marathon Oil
:
Updated:
Concentration and lack thereof in the business segments that serve corporate law departments
:
Updated:
To know your total spend is not enough; put it in the corporate context with a ratio to revenue
:
Updated:
17 ways to develop as a professional other than on-the-job and formal CLE
:
Updated:
Data from 2008 on discovery costs in litigation and some important metrics
:
Updated:
Notes on knowledge management in the Legal and Public Affairs Department of Symantec
:
Updated:
Three areas of research that may improve conceptual search and in-house knowledge recovery
:
Updated:
CEOs may increasingly ask for wide-ranging evaluations of general counsel
:
Updated:
Personalize the intranet site each client sees so that they learn and can handle more on their own
:
Updated:
Prodigious effort by an in-house attorney devoted to ITAR, EAR, FTR, Customs, HTSUS, and OFAC regulations
:
Updated:
A method to group contracts by complexity and thus perhaps to illuminate departmental effectiveness and value delivered
:
Updated:
In Morgan Stanley’s law department, at least seven initiatives to increase diversity
:
Updated:
Software that helps in-house patent lawyers practice more productively
:
Updated:
A funder of UK commercial litigation
:
Updated:
No, the measure of a law department is not the degree to which it drives corporate profits
:
Updated:
Several opportunities for in-house lawyers to learn more about e-discovery
:
Updated:
Is the total number of law departments in the United States materially changing?
:
Updated:
Does your pay matter to you and do you want to compare yours to others? A chorus of “Yes!”, so here is another online salary site
:
Updated:
Building on 813 participants last year, the GC Metrics benchmark survey reopens for 2010 data! Submit yours now and enjoy early-bird benefits!
:
Updated:
Clarify patterns and formulas from data with the spreadsheet function of trend lines
:
Updated:
Learning by doing teaches far more than CLE, CPE and autodidactic professional development
:
Updated:
In-house counsel should not become evaluators of the performance of the executives they advise
:
Updated:
The deepest Procurement threat to law departments: replacement by outside counsel
:
Updated:
Under SOX, prison possible if an in-house lawyer deliberately misleads a government regulatory agency
:
Updated:
Online salary calculator from Robert Half for in-house lawyers
:
Updated:
An article by me about three differences on benchmarks between countries
:
Updated:
You, as an in-house lawyer, are responsible for your own professional development
:
Updated:
Ninth set of blogs that have referred readers to LawDepartmentManagementBlog
:
Updated:
ValueNotes survey of the Indian LPO market
:
Updated:
One and two level reviews done online in Microsoft’s law department
:
Updated:
Data that suggests compliance spending should be about half of total legal spending
:
Updated:
According to Robert Half International, 10 questions you should ask when you interview a lawyer
:
Updated:
Eight perspectives and collections of posts on reporting lines
:
Updated:
Data on listed companies, and therefore the number of law departments: for every 1 million in population, 10-35 companies (and thus law departments)
:
Updated:
WIBGI software wish lists – “wouldn’t it be great if …” – might stimulate improvements in legal department software
:
Updated:
With patent litigation, average costs might rise even while total industry costs decline
:
Updated:
Objections to compliance reporting to the general counsel
:
Updated:
We are not happier with many law firms to choose from: retainer’s regret and inflated expectations
:
Updated:
If inside lawyers are perceived as less objective than outside counsel, a questionable proposition, their value shrivels
:
Updated:
MySalary.com and Associate General Counsel base salary
:
Updated:
An interesting argument that general counsel agree more readily to report to a COO if promoted
:
Updated:
An unusual distribution of lawyers and non-lawyers at Harrah’s, plus thoughts on compliance benchmarks and commuting GCs
:
Updated:
Multivariable testing as a method of systematically taking decisions
:
Updated:
Three causes of stress for in-house lawyers: ignorance, in the dark, and in a hurry
:
Updated:
A three-way division of lawyers at Spain’s Indra: corporate governance, businesses, and corporate specialties
:
Updated:
Three reactions to an Economist article about offshoring legal services
:
Updated:
If there is a dispute over a bill, you as the inside lawyer should set the amount
:
Updated:
Indices, synthetic and natural, as a benchmark tool
:
Updated:
By one rule of thumb, inside counsel are far too costly in relation to outside counsel
:
Updated:
Close to half of Dutch in-house lawyers never practiced at a law firm
:
Updated:
A missing benchmark: R&D inventors per in-house patent lawyer or staff member
:
Updated:
Competitive monitoring could be done by inside patent lawyers or by the R&D function
:
Updated:
Dutch in-house counsel show a steady shift to female lawyers
:
Updated:
To convey managerial direction, the notions of exploitation or exploration
:
Updated:
Seven essential practices of personal productivity
:
Updated:
You can benefit from tracking your own time, after your own fashion
:
Updated:
Data about base salaries of Brazilian and Latin American senior lawyers of multinationals
:
Updated:
An effective law department: a common notion but it lacks construct validity
:
Updated:
Tension between dispassionate dissections of management and our deeper needs for popular memory or beliefs
:
Updated:
Wealth of articles about legal operations in the footnotes to leading treatise
:
Updated:
Yesterday, for 806 law departments the fifth report from General Counsel Metrics issued
:
Updated:
Simply to compare your department’s size to others doesn’t amount to a benchmark
:
Updated:
Ten more very important concepts for those who manage in-house lawyers
:
Updated:
Network definition and its application to law departments and their operations
:
Updated:
November 2010: the ten most interesting posts according to the one who wrote them
:
Updated:
Chinese national policy to obtain swarms of patents and the distortion of metrics
:
Updated:
Part L (fifty) of a collection of embedded metaposts
:
Updated:
US Supreme Court: in-house counsel should be located near the “nerve center”
:
Updated:
Relative rankings of countries and industries by key benchmark metrics, and the possible correlation to participation rates in the General Counsel Metrics survey
:
Updated:
To what degree do general counsel hoard their management innovations and not share them with others, especially competitors?
:
Updated:
We need a historiography of law department management
:
Updated:
The strengths of “weak ties” from a network perspective
:
Updated:
We should court concepts from the law that help us understand management of legal departments
:
Updated:
Innovation ought to be matched by steady, incremental refinements
:
Updated:
Two more data points and references for the effort to estimate the number of legal departments
:
Updated:
Individual workspaces (offices) and all that they convey
:
Updated:
Cheaper, faster, leaner and smarter – that’s all GCs wanted from their firms in 2008
:
Updated:
Software that finds documents based on tools other than search words
:
Updated:
Spearman’s correlation: an example from RFP proposal evaluators and their ordered ranking of law firms
:
Updated:
Rees Morrison’s Morsels #143: posts longa, morsels breva
:
Updated:
No epiphanies give birth to law department management’s “big ideas”
:
Updated:
Nothing fishy about Poisson distributions as used by law departments
:
Updated:
A compilation of 11 countries that offer LPO services
:
Updated:
If someone has a newish idea, here are ten shots likely to be unleashed by doubters
:
Updated:
Eight myths of innovation from Scott Berkun, illustrated through tiered discounts on billing rates
:
Updated:
An “attorney efficiency ratio,” with some commentary
:
Updated:
Seventeen software applications commonly used by law departments, in three levels by specificity of applicability
:
Updated:
An update metapost on accounting references on this blog
:
Updated:
Large benchmark surveys can present “sector” data below broader “industries”
:
Updated:
Revenue supported per dollar of legal spend: data from the technology industry
:
Updated:
Attorney-executives are dotted throughout senior management
:
Updated:
Reward good decision processes more than outcomes, which are often influenced strongly by factors other than the person who decides
:
Updated:
Robert McNamara quote that pertains to benchmarks, their limitations and contributions
:
Updated:
An average of 83 e-mails per person each day, 30,000 per year!
:
Updated:
Lose your tie but think before you wear flip-flops – revealing new data on dress codes in law departments
:
Updated:
It doesn’t matter if law firms make more under an AFA, so long as your costs are controlled
:
Updated:
Four things in-house lawyers do to manage job-related stress, a tad tongue in cheek
:
Updated:
Data on in-house positions eliminated by lawyer, paralegal and support staff
:
Updated:
A visual display of expertise available to in-house counsel, sometime in the future
:
Updated:
Text analysis software that summarizes federal legislation holds promise for other aids to in-house counsel
:
Updated:
Keyboards that don’t hurt and three specific ones mentioned
:
Updated:
Legal departments viewed as reducing transaction costs or increasing resource benefits: two theories of economists
:
Updated:
Seven claimed to be the optimal size of a decision-making group
:
Updated:
Column on descriptions of dispersion for sets of numbers: beyond averages, medians, and trimmed means
:
Updated:
Still time to join 810 law departments in the final benchmark report from General Counsel Metrics
:
Updated:
Predictive coding as a tool to reduce the costs of e-discovery review
:
Updated:
Wide gap between two benchmark surveys on total law department costs per lawyer
:
Updated:
How can “don’t answer your own e-mail” possibly help a general counsel be more productive?
:
Updated:
The four Killer B’s that drive litigation costs, according to a fifth B, Baer
:
Updated:
Even if the Little Prince disparages metrics, some recent milestones of this blog
:
Updated:
A fixed fee with a firm to handle core agreements of a company (Bell Canada)
:
Updated:
Infographics, an advanced next technique to convey metrics effectively to general counsel and others
:
Updated:
Software called a differential evolution optimizer might determine the optimal weightings of benchmarks
:
Updated:
In network terminology, large law departments and large law firms considered together constitute a “small world”
:
Updated:
The longest-running survey of law department benchmarks: Thomson Hildbebrandt BakerRobbins
:
Updated:
Rees Morrison’s Morsels #142: posts longa, morsels breva
:
Updated:
Trend by size in total legal spending by 181 huge companies: all Fortune 500 or larger
:
Updated:
“Process” disparages the level of services that can be provided by LPO companies
:
Updated:
Three notes on e-mail practices and attorney-client privilege
:
Updated:
Pruned patents may create work in-house to license them for exploitation
:
Updated:
Seven articles published by me during 2010 and references to posts about them
:
Updated:
Data from 13 years ago compared to data from the 700+ law departments in General Counsel Metrics’ global benchmarks
:
Updated:
A future of specialized tribunals for transnational legal disputes?
:
Updated:
Core competencies of law departments covered by my most recent article
:
Updated:
A critic assails the insightfulness of the Myers Briggs personality instrument
:
Updated:
6,000 posts on Law Department Management! What hath blog wrought?
:
Updated:
In-house counsel might consider keeping a “commonplace book” for professional notes
:
Updated:
In-house counsel might consider keeping a “commonplace book” for professional notes
:
Updated:
Out in the open, that open office plans probably find little favor from law department lawyers
:
Updated:
Ten years for a management idea to build critical mass, then ten years to become commonplace
:
Updated:
A “positive quarter-power law” may quantify how much more innovative larger law departments are than smaller departments
:
Updated:
Smaller companies start with outside counsel but with growth bring in legal work and lower their total costs
:
Updated:
The meaning of outside counsel convergence shows some signs of divergence
:
Updated:
Once more into the breach on whether legal spending dropped during 2009
:
Updated:
Bugzilla, open source software, as a matter management tool to track software problems and more
:
Updated:
“Aces in Their Places” – a memorable phrase for talent assignment and development
:
Updated:
Ten of the most common acronyms used in connection with law department management
:
Updated:
In several major countries, companies are required to compensate employee inventors, a burden on in-house IP lawyers
:
Updated:
From October, the ten posts that most interested me to write, and URL links
:
Updated:
Another stick for late invoices: automatic 10% discount
:
Updated:
21 books cited on this blog since mid-2009
:
Updated:
Could there be a business around impartial assessments of major litigation by an objective panel?
:
Updated:
Spouses and partners of law department lawyers
:
Updated:
Five reasons why globally dispersed US law departments might have lower total legal spending
:
Updated:
Rees Morrison’s Morsels #141: posts longa, morsels breva
:
Updated:
Prunes can be good for you, whether of patents, subsidiaries, law firms, contracts
:
Updated:
Digital dodginess, metrics manipulation, and creative counting – thoughts on how to protect against slippery numbers in law departments
:
Updated:
Strange effort by a tiny law department to market its customized contract management system
:
Updated:
Make patents internally takes on buy patent services externally – back and forth go the views
:
Updated:
Since no good deed goes unpunished, data on the costs of patent services “create a false floor”
:
Updated:
Put off by four rules of a general counsel for law firms retained
:
Updated:
Cuts in their budgets give power to law departments?
:
Updated:
An overview of topics on the stickiness of individual partners
:
Updated:
FCPA compliance staffing and the inside/outside counsel model
:
Updated:
Ascendancy of risk initiatives among the Financial Times most-innovative departments
:
Updated:
Six primary drivers of total legal spending
:
Updated:
Ten relevant concepts not enough in law department management discussions
:
Updated:
A defining post about definitions proposed on this blog; with these 16, a total of 153
:
Updated:
Part XLIX of a collection of embedded metaposts
:
Updated:
A far-flung topic, globalization
:
Updated:
The more lawyers become experts, possibly, the less cognitively flexible they become
:
Updated:
Tradeoffs of risk and standardization, but the advantage easily goes to standardization
:
Updated:
Decido, ergo sum. Decisions constitute the bedrock of every law department’s effectiveness
:
Updated:
The “first call” is free as part of a major refiguring of ITV’s outside counsel panel
:
Updated:
Demographics in law departments primarily has to do with age, not with other personal aspects
:
Updated:
For the internationalists among law department management, take a look at Babel-Law
:
Updated:
Two initiatives by several departments of the FT Innovative In-House Lawyers 2010: convergence and offshoring
:
Updated:
Some changes over two decades in the distribution of in-house lawyers by practice area
:
Updated:
Three thoughts on the notion of “partnering” with law firms
:
Updated:
Analytics to make sense out of benchmark metrics from legal departments
:
Updated:
During the past twenty years, legal spend as a ratio of corporate revenue has not budged
:
Updated:
Perhaps the largest growth ever of a law department under one general counsel (Countrywide)?
:
Updated:
The consistency of several benchmark ratios over almost two decades
:
Updated:
Twenty industries ranked by “legal efficiency” based on the world’s largest benchmark survey (full results available on request)
:
Updated:
The ultimate career path: CLO to CEO (and Merck just announced one)
:
Updated:
Netherlands ranks best, USA in the middle, and Singapore lowest on novel index of four key benchmarks [write me for the full results]
:
Updated:
Netherlands ranks best, USA in the middle, and Singapore lowest on novel index of four key benchmarks [write me for the full results]
:
Updated:
Compare the law firms you use by average years of experience of lawyers who charge to your matters
:
Updated:
Ample holiday time for in-house lawyers according to recent survey
:
Updated:
Some scratches of the head regarding touted e-discovery costs by big US companies
:
Updated:
Older companies saddled with legacy legal costs; new ones not so burdened
:
Updated:
A partial myth: workers with more monitor square inches are more productive
:
Updated:
Legal risks avoided but, sadly, never to be measured – my column of last week
:
Updated:
Rees Morrison’s Morsels #140: posts longa, morsels breva
:
Updated:
Data on why lawyers leave their in-house position
:
Updated:
If the respected partner leaves for another firm, the partner’s performance is likely to suffer
:
Updated:
Five key provisions in contracts that deserve legal review if altered by the other side
:
Updated:
Nine most important limits on your ability to change what is negotiated in a contract
:
Updated:
Base-rate neglect and demotion of historical data that might tell a different story
:
Updated:
Project management skills of law firms might be fodder for RFP questions
:
Updated:
Some manufacturers earn so much of their revenue from services, what industry are they for benchmark purposes?
:
Updated:
To increase the reliability of metrics – to reduce gaming — consider these five methods
:
Updated:
Ways a general counsel can cut down on direct retentions by clients of outside lawyers
:
Updated:
CARL – Compliance, Audit, Risk Management and Law: the four-legged stool of risks and reputation
:
Updated:
The handwriting is on the wall; end of cursive for lawyers? Not write away
:
Updated:
Survey data on how in-house lawyers found their current position
:
Updated:
On the platform offering of DataCert (Passport)
:
Updated:
An update on metaposts, having produced 523 of them
:
Updated:
Thomson Reuters on a buying spree of interest to legal departments
:
Updated:
Notes on a massive implementation of a SharePoint contract management system
:
Updated:
“Don’t expose a business client to sausage making” – perhaps a wurst practice but how then do you convey value?
:
Updated:
An extra dollop of posts on bonuses for in-house lawyers
:
Updated:
How to handle a request by a business unit executive to reward a lawyer with a bonus
:
Updated:
A handful of ideas to increase the number of diverse lawyers at firms working for your law department
:
Updated:
More than one-quarter of your working day on e-mail, and some thoughts about that
:
Updated:
Idea: a general counsel might answer questions asked on a departmental blog if by an identified person
:
Updated:
Pareto optimality as a consideration when dealing with the law firms that represent your department
:
Updated:
We need “lawhacking,” like a Wiki to collect the tips of efficient in-house lawyers
:
Updated:
Choice overload in RFPs and some strategies to cope
:
Updated:
The dollars at stake in an activity as a possible basis for fees paid the law firm
:
Updated:
“Weekly rates” of law firms and some derivative thoughts about them
:
Updated:
Part XLXIII of a collection of embedded metaposts
:
Updated:
My most recent column for InsideCounsel on metrics and people in law departments
:
Updated:
Contrary to hype, total legal spending 2008-9 likely rose as a percentage of revenue
:
Updated:
Beta, fixed-fee arrangements with law firms, and some beta-blockers that you better understand to abate beta
:
Updated:
Law departments in the 720+ of General Counsel Metrics’ benchmark survey are from high per-capita-income nations
:
Updated:
Over the counter or prescription: over the top drugs to boost mental performance
:
Updated:
Juggling too many things shifts from your hippocampus to your striatum, and why that matters
:
Updated:
“Legal and janitorial services” in online marketplaces for procurement
:
Updated:
Passivity and pusillanimity of law departments when they should aggressively insist on detailed proposals for alternative fees
:
Updated:
Bring your own virtualized computer to work and spend your technology stipend
:
Updated:
On online opinion tool that lets voters shift the topic being commented on
:
Updated:
A benchmark metric, patents per lawyer, suffers from degradation in China
:
Updated:
Rees’s Pieces newest newsletter hot off the press; you are invited to request it or subscribe
:
Updated:
Three dubious quotes from a consultant: law firm control, commodity work and procurement’s involvement
:
Updated:
Mathematics underlies three building blocks of management: information theory, network theory, and decision theory
:
Updated:
Ripples from the Romantic Era in some law department managers
:
Updated:
Core competencies have to do with crucial contributions by lawyers, not their personal attributes
:
Updated:
Assuming nearly all publicly traded companies have an in-house team, some data to consider
:
Updated:
Checks and balances, swords and shields, carrots and sticks – the complementarities of law departments (Chaff Legal Counsel?)
:
Updated:
The whispered worry: business executives might hire incompetent friends to provide legal services
:
Updated:
If you reduce the number of litigation firms you use, you can either transition cases or run out the string
:
Updated:
As if the other side to a contract were not difficult enough, you may butt heads with your own sales force
:
Updated:
Think in terms of law department management issues not eras
:
Updated:
The signal-to-noise ratio and its relationship to information transfer and energy
:
Updated:
For in-house writers, format conventions adhered to encourage both clarity and creativity
:
Updated:
Contract simplification cannot proceed without client agreement on basic business positions
:
Updated:
Not that it settles the issue, but some arguments against parallel settlement counsel
:
Updated:
A large Portuguese legal team, not to mention its Polish lawyers, and global common issues
:
Updated:
Discounts based on the amount of associates leveraged on a matter?
:
Updated:
My response to a comment about the inadvisability of measuring the complexity of contracts
:
Updated:
A benchmark denominator, to divide lawyers, spend etc. by normalized sales and assets
:
Updated:
More software components of the complete contract system
:
Updated:
Employed lawyers (in-house counsel) compared to employed physicians (corporate doctors)
:
Updated:
Nowhere near a discipline, management of in-house lawyers will take time to achieve coherence
:
Updated:
Myths perpetuated about inside lawyers if they balloon the budget on outside counsel
:
Updated:
In addition to contract templates, standards, fall-back language – an approval matrix
:
Updated:
Opportunities and risks with metaphorical borrowings from other disciplines
:
Updated:
“Lawyers would rub the fuzz off a peach” – the latent animus of clients toward lawyers
:
Updated:
The gale of metaphors blowing through these blog posts
:
Updated:
The improper and odd role of an inside lawyer referred to in Social Network
:
Updated:
September’s scintillating subjects – the month’s ten most interesting posts
:
Updated:
Vive la France, but meanwhile, let’s have more management information about French legal departments
:
Updated:
Rees Morrison’s Morsels #140: posts longa, morsels breva
:
Updated:
A metaphor for specialist lawyers as avatars of law school courses
:
Updated:
702 law departments in this week’s release of the GCM global benchmark metrics (no cost, easy to complete, get your report in six weeks)
:
Updated:
Send your lawyers in a group to a law firm for training
:
Updated:
Collective action by general counsel: amicus briefs in support of US Supreme Court cert petitions
:
Updated:
Fixed fees have taken off at British Airways — thoughts about prior familiarity of firm and department
:
Updated:
Law departments should not invest much in training law firms’ “next generation”
:
Updated:
A broadside at the soft-underbelly of what only licensed US lawyers are entitled to do
:
Updated:
An average of $50+ million a year in fees for the eight firms chosen by Royal Dutch Shell?
:
Updated:
An average of $50+ million a year in fees for the eight firms chosen by Royal Dutch Shell?
:
Updated:
No sign of sign-on bonuses for newly-hired in-house attorneys
:
Updated:
Activism urged on general counsel for the long-term good of law departments
:
Updated:
Not all practice areas are created equal when it comes to the availability of benchmark metrics
:
Updated:
Executives should neither retain outside counsel nor communicate with them independently
:
Updated:
Kudos for full allocation at JPMorgan Chase of legal expenses to business units that incurred them
:
Updated:
Abolish engagement letters (aka retention letters) from law departments
:
Updated:
ISO 9000 Certificates as an oblique indicator of the world’s number of law departments
:
Updated:
Halstead metrics for software complexity and an extrapolation to agreement complexity
:
Updated:
Seven reasons why clients might perceive law departments to be slow
:
Updated:
Part of value negotiations with law firms can be reductions in liability risks
:
Updated:
Arrange for periodic question and answer sessions for members of the law department with the chief legal officer
:
Updated:
Legal heads must stay on message and repeat over and over fundamental points they believe
:
Updated:
Legal heads must stay on message and repeat over and over fundamental points they believe
:
Updated:
Conjectures on why procurement professionals seem uninterested in law department spending benchmarks
:
Updated:
If e-billing vendors disclose billing information of law firms, won’t firms refuse to permit such use?
:
Updated:
Performance benchmarks made possible based on verdict and settlement data
:
Updated:
“Corporate clients don’t have legal problems, they have business problems that require the involvement of lawyers”
:
Updated:
References on this blog to law schools in relation to law departments
:
Updated:
Eight principles for successful communities of practice
:
Updated:
Two steps toward contract efficiency – reduce the number of approvals and get e-signatures
:
Updated:
A couple of ideas for how a law department can engage with a local law school
:
Updated:
Noting posts on India other than the flood about offshoring
:
Updated:
Litigation as tremors around the massive competitive struggles
:
Updated:
Management time and surprising total income for heads of IP groups (circa 2004)
:
Updated:
Will general counsel make use of the impending rankings of law firms by U.S. News & World Report?
:
Updated:
Gather ye electronic rosebuds while ye may, from law firms
:
Updated:
Data on the percentage of law firm fees that are billed other than on an hourly basis and the two-year trend
:
Updated:
Consider this response if a law firm recommends costly remedial steps (that they would do)
:
Updated:
Relative efficacy of seven ways of learning
:
Updated:
Scattered clues to the number of law departments in the US from state-level data
:
Updated:
Blind bids for how much your firm, as plaintiff’s counsel, will recover for you before dipping in
:
Updated:
Million-dollar “signing bonus” just for the privilege of retaining a law firm!
:
Updated:
Proclaimed drop in legal spend: good management or bad economy?
:
Updated:
Benchmark boom this year reflected in several studies
:
Updated:
If you fear the retirement of very knowledgeable senior lawyers, consider software to siphon off some of their expertise
:
Updated:
Reduce the cost and environmental impact of office printers
:
Updated:
Don’t ask for preliminary views on a decision at the start of a meeting
:
Updated:
Using in-house lawyers per employee, another speculation on the number of US legal departments
:
Updated:
A recommendation to create a separate corporate licensing team with its own legal staff
:
Updated:
An exhortation in an article to create a Chief Legal Diversity Officer
:
Updated:
Laws and regulations in Europe that block general counsel who want market competition for external counsel
:
Updated:
The warping psychology of power and some cautions for general counsel
:
Updated:
An old-fashioned, client-disrespecting view by a well-known law firm of invoice information
:
Updated:
Still trying to get a handle on the number of legal departments around the world
:
Updated:
Law departments can learn typical charges for IP law services as detailed in AIPLA Report
:
Updated:
Productivity regarding patent applications prepared and filed per year in-house
:
Updated:
Sarbanes-Oxley Section 307/205 – law departments neglect notification of compliance obligation
:
Updated:
Three broad technology areas for patent attorneys: chemical, mechanical and electrical
:
Updated:
Four contenders for the role of packaging legal knowledge for the benefit of in-house counsel
:
Updated:
Lawyers per paralegal as a staffing metric discussed in my online column
:
Updated:
Some perceptions of drawbacks to reliance on law-firm discovery centers
:
Updated:
Posts that refer to the stock market in relation to the law department
:
Updated:
Metaphors: beyond writing to a fundamental of thinking
:
Updated:
All-you-can-eat retainers to resolve specialized questions of law
:
Updated:
The accumulation of metaposts posts on this blog about RFPs and competitive
:
Updated:
More muscle on law firms to alter their policies and practices, this time flextime
:
Updated:
Good ideas on how to defend your good ideas from the inevitable attacks
:
Updated:
Combine statistical data with experienced analysis for the best risk predictions
:
Updated:
On this blog, RFP could also stand for Really Frequent Posts!
:
Updated:
Part LXII of a collection of embedded metaposts
:
Updated:
Even if you take no action, benchmark metrics might serve several purposes
:
Updated:
Convergence continues and so do my doubts about its effectiveness
:
Updated:
Success in assignments outside the legal department burnishes a resume for the top legal spot
:
Updated:
The gems of August – my nominations for the ten most interesting posts
:
Updated:
ConocoPhillips reduced document-related discovery costs by 60 percent by creating a coordinator
:
Updated:
Three steps that help you clamber to the top of a law department, and one to cling to the top
:
Updated:
Rees Morrison’s Morsels #139: posts longa, morsels breva
:
Updated:
Accounting and internal audit may have qualms about AFAs with law firms
:
Updated:
I didn’t think availability of the partner was such a big deal for in-house counsel
:
Updated:
How many trees for paper did your legal department destroy this year?
:
Updated:
It is hard for me to decide when to reference back to earlier posts
:
Updated:
Benchmarks of 700+ legal departments; 4th release early November; add your data now!
:
Updated:
An inquiry whether older legal departments surpass younger ones in innovation
:
Updated:
No partner has to be retained with an entourage of timekeepers
:
Updated:
A designated lawyer to handle issues about conflicts of interest
:
Updated:
A designated lawyer to handle issues about conflicts of interest
:
Updated:
My latest article explains ten ways law firms can take advantage of law department benchmarks
:
Updated:
A law firm’s proximity ranks up there with its fax speed, quality of bound volumes, and mainframe power
:
Updated:
Always a risk of some favoritism when lawyers hire firms, but a few ways to nip the practice
:
Updated:
By accrual twist of fate, general counsel should strive to submit correct accruals
:
Updated:
Update on blog posts regarding e-discovery other than cost
:
Updated:
In terms of reducing costs, innovative sourcing easily bests innovative pricing
:
Updated:
Shut down your legal department and decamp to a law firm?
:
Updated:
Get into the practice of thinking in terms of practice-area benchmarks
:
Updated:
A neat collective legal department action combined with law firms
:
Updated:
An internal team of offshore legal professionals wasn’t the way to go for British Telecomm
:
Updated:
Richard Susskind on the two strategies for law departments to pare costs
:
Updated:
An article lets us infer quite a bit about the complexity of patent practices in legal departments
:
Updated:
The contribution of institutional knowledge in firms may vary by area of representation
:
Updated:
Rebuttals to six arguments against competitive RFP processes
:
Updated:
The concept of baseline external spend by legal departments and a call for clarity
:
Updated:
Do firms bill more as a settlement appears to be nearer? Probably
:
Updated:
Some deny that employees who choose their own work goals have higher motivation
:
Updated:
Use free online software to survey your clients for their perceptions about your department
:
Updated:
Interplay between budgets and benchmarks
:
Updated:
Data going back a decade on costs and awards of wrongful-termination suits
:
Updated:
Trial date management as a cost-management technique mentioned for legal departments
:
Updated:
Blizzard of invoices each year to a multinational legal department, Novartis
:
Updated:
Three controversial players in the demimonde of patents without operations on a list of 25 honorees
:
Updated:
One-third of the people recognized as making the most difference IP are in-house lawyers
:
Updated:
Past 10 columns for InsideCounsel: Morrison on Metrics
:
Updated:
The absolute truth about normalized metrics for benchmarks
:
Updated:
Even if value added outcomes are elusive, pursue well-intentioned processes
:
Updated:
Why the assumption that “cost pressure” always comes from outside (above) the law department?
:
Updated:
Beyond relationship partners at key firms, a view that general counsel should commune with managing partners
:
Updated:
Rees Morrison’s Morsels #138: posts longa, morsels breva
:
Updated:
My congregation of recent posts on correlations and multiple regression
:
Updated:
21st century patent lawyers should contribute far beyond prosecution of patents
:
Updated:
Writing competently, thinking to match, and success as an in-house lawyer
:
Updated:
Toward 700+ legal departments; fourth release in late October; add your data now!
:
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Does a general counsel face more difficult ethical pressures than colleagues if asked to do significantly more with less?
:
Updated:
In-house patent lawyers can team with colleagues to prepare an opportunity matrix
:
Updated:
Mega-cities probably house the largest law departments and almost certainly the largest share of them
:
Updated:
A law department that forces its key law firms to invest at their cost in technology
:
Updated:
Doubtful law departments are the yeast for document-integrity software rising throughout the company
:
Updated:
Continued decline reported in use of law firm extranets by law departments and speculation on four reasons other than inconvenience
:
Updated:
Maybe law departments should scrap evaluations of favored firms?
:
Updated:
Every now and then, a double blind review of the budgets and outcome on a large matter
:
Updated:
If buyers now hold sway, it is not just because of corporate client cost pressures
:
Updated:
Work hard for pomodoros – with an egg timer – to fight against the indulgence to procrastinate
:
Updated:
Quick-reference procedures guides would help legal departments
:
Updated:
Study claims that general counsel always visit law firm websites when selecting firms
:
Updated:
Although not my view, six more arguments against competitive bidding processes
:
Updated:
Welcome to another general counsel with a blog, Jon Olson’s General Counsel Diary!
:
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Relative complexity of legal departments calculated as an entropy index of diversification
:
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Three tablespoons on placement and recruitment issues
:
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Picture the advantages of graphics to convey complexity, ironically explained with text
:
Updated:
Structured settlements and a connection to, you guessed it, benchmarks
:
Updated:
Law departments, ponder the spread of large, funded, business-like non-firm LPOs
:
Updated:
The clear relationship, but murky benchmarks, of R&D spending and legal spending
:
Updated:
Not all benchmark respondents want to complete a survey in English
:
Updated:
Useful commentary for in-house counsel on brains
:
Updated:
Managers in legal departments probably feel little concern about law schools and their preparation of graduates
:
Updated:
Part XLXI of a collection of embedded metaposts
:
Updated:
Ten best posts of July 2010 – or, to be honest, ten that seem to me really crunchy
:
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Putting a firm’s value where its client’s money is — a firm offers: pay us what you think our legal services were worth
:
Updated:
Tension between limited core staff and deepened bench strength
:
Updated:
A general counsel to live-tweet from Corporate Counsel Forum Europe
:
Updated:
Three thoughts law firm budgets for matters: time period, zero average variance and ranges
:
Updated:
I stand corrected: mistakes confessed by this blogger and an admonition to all managers
:
Updated:
Thanks to those who subscribe to this blawg by RSS feed and an invitation to you others
:
Updated:
Exponential increases that managers of law departments encounter
:
Updated:
Attention providers of software to legal departments: I will blog about sales to named legal departments
:
Updated:
A resource for legal departments to find “distinguished neutrals” – arbitrators and mediators
:
Updated:
A possible RFP question: what has your firm done to protect against hackers?
:
Updated:
A misnomer: institutional knowledge of firms is mostly individual knowledge
:
Updated:
Law departments, pessimism and the spirit of compliance
:
Updated:
Is it typical to include SEC filing fees, stock exchange registrations, or compliance training costs in budgets?
:
Updated:
Four more legal departments and their assemblage of posts (Amex, Bank of America, Barclays, HSBC, and Pfizer)
:
Updated:
Four more legal departments and their assemblage of posts (Amex, Bank of America, Barclays, HSBC, and Pfizer)
:
Updated:
Sony Ericsson’ legal department: convergence, IP rights specialists, and joint venture
:
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A view that the economic slump has boosted the stock of in-house counsel
:
Updated:
Three noteworthy points from IBM’s legal department: primacy of talent, client education through intranets, and offshoring
:
Updated:
IBM restructures its legal department to set up global legal delivery centers
:
Updated:
The general counsel of IBM highlights three transitional challenges for lawyers who move in-house
:
Updated:
A Taiwanese legal department with two other unusual features
:
Updated:
Super set of 17 posts from the SuperConference
:
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Deep down, law firm leaders may not want law departments to improve
:
Updated:
In the dark about law departments in Africa
:
Updated:
An easy way to arrange for e-rooms and extranets through a specialist provider
:
Updated:
More examples pulled together of legal departments pulling together
:
Updated:
A look back at posts about the costs of electronic discovery of documents
:
Updated:
Ways current and future to assay the relative quality (or attractiveness) of posts on this blog
:
Updated:
Attrition as a byproduct of major promotions: a study that needs to be done
:
Updated:
Lessons learned by a veteran about contract management software
:
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How many of your lawyers have left and become a public company general counsel?
:
Updated:
World’s most advanced study of legal department staff and spending benchmarks
:
Updated:
Three priority levels for contracts handled by a legal department
:
Updated:
Talent management techniques, including on-boarding and competency ladders
:
Updated:
Management ideas from a speaker (trademarks, newsletters, and business plans)
:
Updated:
A two-by-two framework to categorize knowledge characteristics of a law department
:
Updated:
Six poor reasons why in-house candidates aren’t promoted to serve as the new general counsel
:
Updated:
Tracking patterns of telephone calls by in-house lawyers in partial lieu of tracking time
:
Updated:
Another blog on law departments – In-House Rants – and a nice word for this one
:
Updated:
Solid steps to consider if your legal department handles a steady flow of contracts
:
Updated:
LPO providers in the Philippines, with seven named
:
Updated:
Another cut at the definition of processes, this time as organizational routines
:
Updated:
Growth over two years in Australia/New Zealand benchmark survey
:
Updated:
Estimate of US electronic data discovery market doesn’t jibe with the hoopla about spending
:
Updated:
Lawyers per billion of total law departments compared to portions of departments
:
Updated:
Convergence of contracts – now, that convergence makes sense
:
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The synecdoche error of using “the XYZ firm” to describe a bundle of variant behaviors
:
Updated:
Formal architecture of a legal department compared to culture and ways of working
:
Updated:
Insourcing patent prep and prosc with comments on scale and benchmarks
:
Updated:
Insourcing patent prep and prosc with comments on scale and benchmarks
:
Updated:
Farming patent applications out to law firms and choosing among them based on “events”
:
Updated:
The cartography of network connections courtesy of sociograms
:
Updated:
Nuts and bolts of Six Sigma techniques to improve litigation management at Textron
:
Updated:
The unknown risks or benefits of bringing in a general counsel from outside the department
:
Updated:
Assuming legal benchmarks reflect technological intensity and competitiveness, more ways to measure it for an industry
:
Updated:
Kolmogorov-Smirnov test to see whether benchmark respondents are representative
:
Updated:
Some observations on data based on Corporate Counsel’s four best legal departments
:
Updated:
Motivational and knowledge barriers to in-house lawyers adopting good practices of others, internal and external
:
Updated:
Fads of chief legal officers, with 12 named, compared to trends (20 named)
:
Updated:
Ten most thought-provoking posts from June on LawDepartmentManagementBlog.com, IMHO
:
Updated:
Linking R&D spending and patent intensity to legal spending and staffing
:
Updated:
Google’s Sidewiki as an example of a knowledge development tool for legal departments
:
Updated:
Let contract specialists handle the legwork on contracts before the legal department runs with it
:
Updated:
Whether law departments should claim revenue from patent licensing and sales
:
Updated:
Thoughts on fees of investment banks as the critique might apply to fees of leading law firms
:
Updated:
Perhaps convergence happens in part because law firms bow out?
:
Updated:
Ask your key law firm to run business simulations to educate your lawyers
:
Updated:
International legal spend by law departments may vary according to whether the company is US-based or not
:
Updated:
Cantankerous views on a consulting group’s claims
:
Updated:
Part XLX of a collection of embedded metaposts
:
Updated:
To improve decisions, complement a capable lawyer with decisional software
:
Updated:
Goodbye legal guides and directories of lawyers; hello online searches and social networks
:
Updated:
Continued widespread negativity toward offshoring legal services
:
Updated:
Global and industry differences in the involvement of Procurement in selections of law firms
:
Updated:
Cronbach’s alpha, a statistical test of whether questions on a survey get at the same notion
:
Updated:
Three main practices in process improvement and two comments
:
Updated:
More definitions – constructs – on this blog
:
Updated:
Herfindahl’s index of industry complexity, and two possible applications to law departments
:
Updated:
Specialization is related to but not the same as steady volume of work
:
Updated:
Alternative fee arrangements might not save money, according to survey results
:
Updated:
Will the numbers reported on alternative fees please stand still a moment?
:
Updated:
Hyper-specialized software: create USPTO-compliant PDF documents!
:
Updated:
Absorbtive capacity of legal departments
:
Updated:
Low cost is low on the totem pole of what global legal departments deem important
:
Updated:
Pulling up my own SOX – 19 posts that refer to Sarbanes-Oxley
:
Updated:
18 lists on Twitter that include this blog and an analysis of their reach
:
Updated:
Differences in legal intensity of industries do not cause assessments of primary firms to vary much
:
Updated:
My latest InsideCounsel column: litigation, with a novel metric for total hours devoted to litigation
:
Updated:
Major survey finds that definitions of value by legal departments don’t primarily address money
:
Updated:
Clues to seven koans on “legal risk”
:
Updated:
Ambiguity in survey on average hourly rates of “most used firm”
:
Updated:
Paucity of posts on American Express’ huge legal department
:
Updated:
Piling on findings about stress: more control over your workload lessens stress
:
Updated:
Data suggests Chief Legal Officers have done less well on pay than CFOs and CIOs over past five years
:
Updated:
Seven koans on “legal risk”
:
Updated:
Too high a percentage of fees estimated to be paid based on “value-based billing”
:
Updated:
A theory of in-house lawyers between the devil client and the deep blue sea
:
Updated:
To a degree, a law department that is a “good corporate citizen” shows value
:
Updated:
Picking apart an effort to collect metrics on knowledge management while still acknowledging the worth of the effort
:
Updated:
The Big Mac index suggests differences between Europe and North America on a key benchmark should have been wider
:
Updated:
Four levels of support for users of software in a legal department
:
Updated:
Latest Rees newsletter published; sign up today to get yours (hint: click on the notice on the right)
:
Updated:
Five management theories that apply to outside counsel relations of legal departments
:
Updated:
Law departments that set minimum “chargeable hours” compound the ills of tracking time
:
Updated:
Law departments, even when they use big firms, deal with malpractice issues
:
Updated:
Rees Morrison’s Morsels #137: posts longa, morsels breva
:
Updated:
Twelve benefits for you when you take part in the 600+ department benchmark study
:
Updated:
A bit of theory describing legal departments as mathematical spaces
:
Updated:
A network model for legal departments with three layers
:
Updated:
For lawyers, brains and creativity show no statistical correlation
:
Updated:
Some mathematical relations important to general counsel are curvilinear
:
Updated:
Software general counsel should regret if it raises the amounts billed to them
:
Updated:
Major consolidation in the online compliance training industry
:
Updated:
Ten percent of the Fortune Global 500 in benchmark survey: the large and the small of it
:
Updated:
An expert on compliance offers some thoughts about compliance heads reporting to the general counsel
:
Updated:
Three dozen software packages that are credited to enable creative thinking
:
Updated:
Resource Dependence Theory (RDT) and its applicability to legal departments
:
Updated:
Rotating law firms off your account based on the passage of time? No!
:
Updated:
Unquestioned use of research and misquotes to boot now mis-portray dramatic legal cost increases
:
Updated:
Survey suggests in-house lawyers are from Mars, IT staff from Venus, but what on earth does it mean?
:
Updated:
Three findings about decision-making under stress
:
Updated:
You can’t value what you do not know – Nobelist on fees based on advance valuation of a law firm’s knowledge
:
Updated:
How are the constructs of “risk” and “value” similar? Seven commonalities
:
Updated:
Do all the support functions get dumped on, including (or even particularly) legal?
:
Updated:
A three-part bucketing of IT spending and its applicability to legal spending
:
Updated:
Achieve “full transparency in all talent management processes”
:
Updated:
10,000+ extranets used by clients of one law firm!
:
Updated:
Motorola’s structure: its law department houses Licensing and Ethics & Compliance
:
Updated:
Not much of an argument that when you merely describe your spending fully you show value
:
Updated:
Draw a clear line between contracts that need legal review and purchase orders that do not
:
Updated:
To control outside costs, require inside lawyers to get signoff each time from their supervisor
:
Updated:
Marketing the department’s services internally has huge importance
:
Updated:
A “special litigation committee” to monitor expensive and risky lawsuits?
:
Updated:
Is cost sanity hopeless for legal departments in light of e-discovery’s crazy projected increases?
:
Updated:
Disturbing findings for legal departments regarding time tracking by law firms
:
Updated:
Internal audits and the COSO framework for testing a legal department’s controls?
:
Updated:
Could a law department declare 10-11AM as quiet time, with the goal of no internal calls, visits or emails?
:
Updated:
“Signaling” functions of a law department: posh firms, pricey partners, progressive practices
:
Updated:
Positivism and its perspectives on knowledge about law department management
:
Updated:
Part XLIX of a collection of embedded metaposts
:
Updated:
Internal auditors who review the legal department – ambitious goals
:
Updated:
Government legal departments post useful information online
:
Updated:
Rees Morrison’s Morsels #136: posts longa, morsels breva
:
Updated:
Law departments that licensed CPi software that infringes a patent could themselves be embroiled in litigation
:
Updated:
Lighten the load on your department with consistently formatted policies easily available
:
Updated:
Lighten the load on your department with consistently formatted policies easily available
:
Updated:
Data on the reporting lines of chief compliance officers
:
Updated:
Greatest challenges facing adoption or support of informal learning initiatives
:
Updated:
Huge difference in a key benchmark across geographic regions
:
Updated:
Second benchmark release due soon: 500+ legal departments with 3,000 thousand more lawyers, quartile summaries, and regional data
:
Updated:
A regulator would tell companies that compliance heads should not report to legal
:
Updated:
Comments on 300+ comments on this blog for the past 18 months
:
Updated:
Topics under-represented among the 120 best posts of the past 12 months: clients and technology
:
Updated:
Why metrics are the second most common group in the 120 best posts on this blog from May 2009 — May 2010
:
Updated:
Contingency theory and its applicability to legal departments
:
Updated:
More analysis of the 120 best posts on this blog from May 2009 — May 2010: thinking
:
Updated:
Analysis of the 120 best posts on this blog from May 2009 through May 2010 – outside counsel management predominates
:
Updated:
Two technology topics with torque – programming and multiplicity of packages
:
Updated:
Best management posts of May 2010 – which completes a year of “Best Posts”
:
Updated:
Law departments should expect questions from law firms that receive an RFP
:
Updated:
A comment or two on some data regarding internal vs. external costs per hour
:
Updated:
Some management insights into Proctor & Gamble’s massive legal department
:
Updated:
Seven years of Serengeti data on median spending on outside counsel
:
Updated:
Standardized scores as a quick way to compare a law department to industry peers
:
Updated:
Standardized scores as a quick way to compare a law department to industry peers
:
Updated:
Hire your retired lawyers to save money and time
:
Updated:
Allowance rates for patent applications as one indicator of effectiveness
:
Updated:
Insights from the Economist on the LPO industry in India
:
Updated:
The more cases your lawyers handle, the more law firms they manage, but no metric
:
Updated:
Perhaps occasionally force-rank your outside counsel and drop the laggards
:
Updated:
A department uses templates in e-mails to notify custodians of documents about legal holds
:
Updated:
An export/import function that falls under the responsibility of a general counsel
:
Updated:
Codean software that maps and links defined terms in a contract
:
Updated:
Create one matter for an activity rather than allow several lawyers to each create their own
:
Updated:
Five sizes of my fractal writing on ideas about law department management
:
Updated:
Five sizes of my fractal writing on ideas about law department management
:
Updated:
At staff meetings, assign a different lawyer each time to serve as chair
:
Updated:
At staff meetings, assign a different lawyer each time to serve as chair
:
Updated:
Management differences between legal departments of publicly traded vs. privately held companies
:
Updated:
Unusual contingency fee based on costs advanced by a firm and the eye-popping result
:
Updated:
Instant value from instant messaging among members of a legal team
:
Updated:
An overlooked detriment when you bring aboard senior associates – risk avoidance to risk management
:
Updated:
Generalist business lawyers and law-area experts
:
Updated:
Network externalities – benchmark insights increase in value as the member numbers exceed 500
:
Updated:
Give your brain the reins, don’t canter to fit in if your head can gallop
:
Updated:
When ticked off and hot under the collar, five steps that might help you cool down
:
Updated:
Five kinds of conflict and examples for each from legal departments
:
Updated:
There’s methodology in that madness of benchmarking
:
Updated:
Rewards and recognition for lawyers who contribute to a knowledge management system
:
Updated:
Rewards and recognition for lawyers who contribute to a knowledge management system
:
Updated:
Client training by the legal department and two metrics to show how it can pay for itself
:
Updated:
Eight suggestions for cc’s on email messages to unclog mailboxes
:
Updated:
More reasons why general counsel might put off submitting data for a benchmarking study
:
Updated:
Rees Morrison’s Morsels #135: posts longa, morsels breva
:
Updated:
Corporate lawyers have feelings too, more than they acknowledge
:
Updated:
A data point about the number of solicitors practicing in-house in Britain
:
Updated:
World Cup has no monopoly on goals – setting performance goals for lawyers
:
Updated:
Much-maligned bureaucracy also has a positive contribution
:
Updated:
All other things being equal, deliberate and careful selection of new hires should pay off
:
Updated:
Distributive justice (outcome fairness) and procedural justice (method fairness)
:
Updated:
No prospect of agreement on a dominant value that defines the “best law departments”
:
Updated:
Descriptions of ideal legal department help less than a focus on what actually happens
:
Updated:
Let’s count some signs that we are embarking on the Decade of Data
:
Updated:
Correlations between inside and outside spending
:
Updated:
Internet tools and offerings retard our ability to concentrate, absorb, and learn
:
Updated:
Diversity’s much touted benefits bump into research findings on ineffectiveness
:
Updated:
For benchmark surveys, an example of how we might define “litigation”?
:
Updated:
Insist on a précis at the start of each large invoice
:
Updated:
Third-party funders of major litigation: profiles of Burford Capital and Juridica
:
Updated:
Use software to disable distractions and increase your productivity
:
Updated:
No overhead charges for contract attorneys or temps, according to GE
:
Updated:
Freebies by law firms are a “crucial factor” in decisions to instruct external law firms?
:
Updated:
Were general counsel genuine when they answered survey questions about outsourcing?
:
Updated:
“Modalitiés alternatives de facturation” – alternative fee arrangements – in French legal teams
:
Updated:
A puzzling finding as to a permanent shift in the client-lawyer balance of power
:
Updated:
Another way to understand and clearly describe benchmark data – a stem and leaf display
:
Updated:
One quarter of US law departments average less than one law suit per year!
:
Updated:
An example of survey participation data excellently explained
:
Updated:
Law department goals, processes, practices, and methods – a framework for these as well as concepts
:
Updated:
Unbalanced representation by regions, so far, in the largest-ever benchmark survey
:
Updated:
A “typical work flow process” for an invoice sent to a law department, but really GE’s
:
Updated:
Half of a large group of legal departments in France saw budget increases in 2009
:
Updated:
Half of a large group of legal departments in France saw budget increases in 2009
:
Updated:
Sub silentio: one reason why a benchmark participant might request anonymity
:
Updated:
Survey data from French legal departments on cost reduction methods
:
Updated:
A new cooperative effort, the Inclusion Initiative urges members to put their minority-firm money on the line
:
Updated:
Atomic Noodle! Law department management videos with this blogger holding forth
:
Updated:
Based on CEOs, do insiders promoted to GC tend to perform better and last longer?
:
Updated:
A good GC advocates for the law department
:
Updated:
Three points from a general counsel panel: crisis, curves, and counselors
:
Updated:
Each time you impose a new management task, should you stop one?
:
Updated:
Three more mindsets that help undergird alternative fee arrangements
:
Updated:
Not structure but decision-making prowess sets a legal department above the crowd
:
Updated:
Reprise of thoughtful posts (IMHO): ten best posts on this Blog of April 2010
:
Updated:
A colorful peek at the world’s largest benchmark report (500+ departments)
:
Updated:
A growing trend toward disclosure lawyers who are deemed high potentials
:
Updated:
A chronology of yet another four-time general counsel
:
Updated:
Part XLVIII of a collection of embedded metaposts
:
Updated:
“Plural grounding” presents arguments for or against without setting priorities
:
Updated:
Millions paid to a general counsel under a “change of control” provision
:
Updated:
The right information to present about data collection and participants in a survey
:
Updated:
Survey data on the cases most commonly litigated by US companies
:
Updated:
Three European providers of software for legal departments
:
Updated:
Sloppy time entries by law firm lawyers vitiate insights from in-house review or analytical software
:
Updated:
US corporations and the percentage of their cases in which they are plaintiff, defendant, or non-party (plus state or federal venue)
:
Updated:
A rare law department that agitates for real-time billing data
:
Updated:
Strong proponents at GE of task-based billing, but my doubts remain
:
Updated:
Caution against finger-pointing if (when) some cost-reduction decision boomerangs
:
Updated:
To improve hourly billing, raise rates for the truly experienced, lower them for other timekeepers
:
Updated:
The “standard hourly rate” is ephemeral – same timekeeper often bills different rates to different clients
:
Updated:
Data on general counsel who participate in multiple benchmark studies
:
Updated:
An aggregation of new international cases in 2008 before 14 arbitral institutions
:
Updated:
Hourly rates of US partners in 2008, surprisingly low
:
Updated:
Mindsets that ought to undergird effective alternative fee arrangements
:
Updated:
Offshore to please – update on posts about Legal Process Outsourcing (93 in total!)
:
Updated:
Offshore to please – update on posts about Legal Process Outsourcing (93 in total!)
:
Updated:
Seven steps in the Puma law department’s multi-pronged program against counterfeiting
:
Updated:
Seven steps in the Puma law department’s multi-pronged program against counterfeiting
:
Updated:
Why don’t law firms test their invoices against their client’s e-billing rules before submitting them?
:
Updated:
Replacement of a matter management system can rank up there with a root canal
:
Updated:
Three providers of contract management software at SuperConference
:
Updated:
Objet trouve benchmarks from a factoid about Unilever’s patent function
:
Updated:
Six boundary conditions for alternative fee arrangements (AFAs)
:
Updated:
The second biggest risk CFOs of firms worry about? Exceeding the investment on fixed-fee services
:
Updated:
Seven steps a general counsel might take to reduce gaming on matter budgets
:
Updated:
It’s not at all a buyers’ market at the level of personal likes and loyalties
:
Updated:
Why a small slice of benchmark participants request anonymity
:
Updated:
Why a small slice of benchmark participants request anonymity
:
Updated:
Ranking in a survey of the six most common targets for saving during 2009
:
Updated:
Assessments of legal departments by the law firms that represent them
:
Updated:
Comparative data across countries in Europe from new benchmark study
:
Updated:
A benchmark consequence if revenue falls faster than total legal spend
:
Updated:
A benchmark consequence if revenue falls faster than total legal spend
:
Updated:
Survey: why law departments don’t track more data on outside counsel spend and matters
:
Updated:
Shout out to Pinhawk and its readers who come to this site
:
Updated:
Eighth set of blogs that have referred readers to LawDepartmentManagementBlog
:
Updated:
My article on bidders’ conference calls during competitive selection processes
:
Updated:
Respondents to the largest-ever benchmark study are 63% general counsel, 16% direct reports, and 8% COOs
:
Updated:
Could lack of alternative fee arrangements (AFA) breach a fiduciary duty owed by a general counsel?
:
Updated:
Indefatigable doesn’t mean skinny: new ventures in the past year of this blog
:
Updated:
Pfizer, the pharma giant, also makes the news as a law department
:
Updated:
Heterogeneity of a general counsel’s direct reports may degrade a team’s performance
:
Updated:
Does the metabolism of change decline the longer a general counsel serves?
:
Updated:
Response rate terminology for benchmark and other surveys
:
Updated:
Not speaking truth to power comes more from futility than fear
:
Updated:
The silent majority of general counsel – it’s completely dark out there about what most legal departments are doing
:
Updated:
Welcome to a new GC blogger, Richard Russeth!
:
Updated:
Hyperpost on innovation and creativity – six metaposts on originality
:
Updated:
Law departments of private Chinese companies reported to have little respect
:
Updated:
When you add co-general counsel, management troubles are likely to multiply
:
Updated:
It might be appropriate to normalize spend for law departments in different countries by their respective country’s tort costs
:
Updated:
An update on posts about innovation and creativity in legal departments
:
Updated:
Save on services: average renewal by a vendor offers a discount of 4 to 6 percent
:
Updated:
What is the difference between anonymous and confidential survey responses?
:
Updated:
Retweets from this blog on Twitter, a snapshot from one day, and the power of the Internet to circulate management ideas
:
Updated:
The benefits of checking references before personnel interviews begin
:
Updated:
Part XLVII of a collection of embedded metaposts
:
Updated:
Deviance is good! Discover innovation in your department through positive deviance
:
Updated:
Law department management is most importantly about relations between people
:
Updated:
Learn from the 455 law departments in the first edition of the global benchmark report
:
Updated:
Ten most stimulating posts of March 2010, IMHO
:
Updated:
You manage people better through improving their understanding than directing their behavior
:
Updated:
Why insist on alternative fees when you could pay and explain the value you perceived you got?
:
Updated:
A proposal for how in-house lawyers can help to assess and mitigate compliance and ethics risks
:
Updated:
An article on four methodological challenges for legal department benchmarks
:
Updated:
Internal promotions to general counsel: “veterans” compared to “auditions”
:
Updated:
Bar passage rate in Korea at less than 5% must restrict number of in-house lawyers and warp benchmarks
:
Updated:
IP department observations from Sweden
:
Updated:
Four embellishments on the top-ranked external cost-saving initiatives from a recent survey
:
Updated:
General counsel, like CEOs, might succeed more often when promoted from inside
:
Updated:
Track time by periodic screenshots analyzed with recognition software!
:
Updated:
Should benchmark studies segregate small law departments?
:
Updated:
Six outside law firms per inside lawyer – a data point from Cox Communications
:
Updated:
Expand productive time by reducing supervision of unchanged tasks
:
Updated:
If there were a law department maturity ladder – don’t try to climb it
:
Updated:
Profit margins of a company or industry probably correlate with total legal spending as a percentage of revenue
:
Updated:
The IP maturity ladder and what it suggests about IP staffing and spending
:
Updated:
One law department’s five “pillars” includes legal department management!
:
Updated:
Two more clues as to how many legal departments there might be in a country: traded companies and corporate tax returns
:
Updated:
Modest goals characterize most in-house lawyers and departments
:
Updated:
Social network analysis could reinforce and quantify a depiction of a legal department’s value
:
Updated:
Correlations of general counsel attributes to key benchmark metrics
:
Updated:
In today’s conditions, general counsel might find they have additional responsibilities
:
Updated:
Value from a law firm: defined ex post but not ex ante
:
Updated:
Law departments per billion dollars of Gross Domestic Product: 0.5-0.8 in developed countries
:
Updated:
Once your department has dieted, it’s important to keep the weight off
:
Updated:
Benchmarks based on legal departments in a country have confounding data from branch offices of foreign law departments
:
Updated:
Discounts and volume discounts still permit invoice write-offs
:
Updated:
Martindale-Hubble’s Connected hosts a webinar on global benchmarks for law departments
:
Updated:
Thoughts on law departments if there are many fewer publicly traded companies since Sarbanes
:
Updated:
Hours worked suggest lower satisfaction with workload than is reported
:
Updated:
Reconciling odd results of a survey on “work-life balance” and “workload”
:
Updated:
What nine advantages do in-house lawyers see in their jobs, and four remarks?
:
Updated:
Involvement of vendor in preparation of ROI document
:
Updated:
Overarching management theories applicable to legal departments
:
Updated:
A drawback of allocating points instead of ranking
:
Updated:
I doubt general counsel really care about a key firm’s “legal capacity insurance”
:
Updated:
A statistical test, a two-group mean-comparison, can show whether differences are meaningful between benchmarks
:
Updated:
Ten principles of knowledge management, by Thomas Davenport
:
Updated:
Three methodological and statistical points about benchmark data
:
Updated:
May I brag a bit? Five fan quotes about LawDepartmentManagementBlog.com
:
Updated:
Four thoughts on legal department management from a book by Henry Mintzberg
:
Updated:
20,000 or so legal departments in the US, based on three directional estimates
:
Updated:
Not MFN but BUCK – Best Under Conditions Known
:
Updated:
Data from Russian legal departments about discounts increasing as matters become more routine
:
Updated:
The higher the revenue per employee, the higher the number of inside lawyers per employee?
:
Updated:
Hard and disciplined work over an extended period makes much more of a difference than “innate” talent
:
Updated:
“Information technology … is a misnomer” or seriously under-inclusive
:
Updated:
Economists would not believe a gap persists between fees paid law firms and value delivered
:
Updated:
Spun off thoughts based on the large litigation group at Ford Motor
:
Updated:
Puzzled over discounts that differ depending on the projected value of the legal services
:
Updated:
Rees Morrison’s Morsels #135: posts longa, morsels breva
:
Updated:
Five ways to safely learn about and mitigate serious blowups
:
Updated:
Employee engagement is situational; drivers vary across and even within industries
:
Updated:
How management practices vary as they diffuse from law department to law department
:
Updated:
One activity – litigation lessons learned – and the breadth of management values it calls into play
:
Updated:
Information equals how much you learn from unexpected events
:
Updated:
A formula to show how similar one legal department is to another on the four key dimensions
:
Updated:
Webinar on Connected regarding first release of benchmark findings
:
Updated:
Compensation in legal departments, if true to usual norms, is not distributed by productivity of the lawyers
:
Updated:
A huge internal team that reviews invoices submitted to CNA
:
Updated:
Fee quotes that are much lower than comparables are double-edged
:
Updated:
Get your tesseract together and visualize the four most important benchmark metrics
:
Updated:
Might a governmental committee mandate that law departments provide benchmark data?
:
Updated:
Neuro-linguistic programming pushed as a useful tool for managers of legal departments
:
Updated:
$2,500 per lawyer per day: the human scale of total legal department spending
:
Updated:
Three recommendations for how to handle references by vendors
:
Updated:
The practicality of the breakfast meeting with a law firm, rather than the traditional lunch
:
Updated:
Part XLVI of a collection of embedded metaposts
:
Updated:
Law departments and uses of non-legal artificial intelligence
:
Updated:
Conflicting interests inherent in any supervisory relationship (agency theory)
:
Updated:
The huge legal team at Barclays, some earlier posts on it, and a cost-saving step with temps
:
Updated:
Benchmark surveys, subsidiaries, and some stable ratios over a nine-year period
:
Updated:
Some unusual factors why departments might choose particular law firms for very significant matters
:
Updated:
Ask your law firms if your work is profitable for them??? What me worry?
:
Updated:
Divergent interests of the legal department (company) and outside counsel in statements to the press
:
Updated:
To improve processes, a formula suggests how many people you will need to train (lots!)
:
Updated:
Match the other party’s contract against industry (or your) standards, and software that may assist
:
Updated:
One million dollars per inside lawyer – a guideline metric based on your total legal budget
:
Updated:
General counsel and their broadening role in the court of public opinion
:
Updated:
A chart that conveys spend on outside counsel in a fresh and illuminating way
:
Updated:
Document assembly users among major companies, and two new entrants
:
Updated:
18 speculations on why there was so much silence during a bidders’ conference call with many law firms
:
Updated:
The Three Cs that Tom Sager of DuPont looks for in his key law firms
:
Updated:
Thoughts on how many law firms an individual in-house lawyer can effectively manage
:
Updated:
Is a European Patent Attorney an attorney for purposes of benchmarking?
:
Updated:
A mysterious risk that justifies absolving your legal department of responsibility for third-party invoices?
:
Updated:
Total legal spend as a percentage of revenue, potent and pervasive
:
Updated:
Total legal spend declines as companies grow, and seven more possible reasons why
:
Updated:
Everywhere you look, a network or association of law firms – at least 38!
:
Updated:
Everywhere you look, a network or association of law firms – at least 38!
:
Updated:
Close the presses on your own newsletter, but roll them on a corporate one
:
Updated:
Known total legal spend and the undercount of total external legal spend
:
Updated:
Data on the HQ country of the first 332 participants in the General Counsel Metrics benchmark study
:
Updated:
Surveys that show one-third up, one-third down, and one-third neutral may tell us very little
:
Updated:
Ironic: perturbed over hours billed by outside counsel, but attracted by cost-per-hour inside
:
Updated:
IP audits and some data on how frequently in-house lawyers may be involved
:
Updated:
Two points on Procurement: they stay away if your costs are under control but they can help on ancillary services
:
Updated:
Average number of IP holdings per company and their similarity, from a recent survey
:
Updated:
If a law firm represents you in several areas of law, it’s harder to evaluate the performance of the firm as a whole
:
Updated:
Managerial overload when you assemble a virtual team of firms and vendors?
:
Updated:
Irony: complaints about high rates of partners yet gripes about not getting enough of their time
:
Updated:
Irony: complaints about high rates of partners yet gripes about not getting enough of their time
:
Updated:
Email me for my book chapter on outside counsel benchmarks
:
Updated:
Proposition: plurality of matters are handled by no more than one partner and one associate (possibly a paralegal)
:
Updated:
A handful of antidotes for poisonous decision traps
:
Updated:
Reputation represents expectations based on a law firm’s past behavior; status reflects position in a hierarchy of value
:
Updated:
Welcome to Global Legal blog and Matt Sullivan
:
Updated:
Ten most interesting posts (IMHO) from February’s 90+, with URLs
:
Updated:
Two more reasons why law firms may be slow to innovate
:
Updated:
A claim that law firms have steadily allocated responsibilities lower
:
Updated:
In-house lawyers admit some resistance to alternative fee arrangements, but blast law firms, perhaps unfairly
:
Updated:
Do law firms that represent you collaborate with each other? Two questions that might surface the truth
:
Updated:
Proportion of complex legal work in law departments is low and complexity does not equal high value
:
Updated:
“Hourly billing” posts on this blog, a profusion of 18
:
Updated:
A brain trust that doesn’t cost a trust fund, to provide litigation services you trust
:
Updated:
400+ legal departments so far in global benchmarking study: preliminary data
:
Updated:
A brief shining moment, well actually 4.6 years, on average as a chief legal officer
:
Updated:
Skewness describes oddly-shaped distributions of numbers, such as invoice amounts
:
Updated:
Blogger speaks; a videoclip of the host of LawDepartmentManagementBlog!
:
Updated:
“Cross selling is the bane of my existence,” quoth the Chandler
:
Updated:
Happy first birthday to Martindale-Hubble’s Connected!
:
Updated:
BT enters into broad-scale arrangement for legal services support from UnitedLex
:
Updated:
For starters, 21 different titles for legal department administrators
:
Updated:
Information asymmetry about the quality of work to come from a law firm is not such a big deal
:
Updated:
Predominance of privately held companies in two benchmark surveys of general counsel
:
Updated:
Put material that is useful to clients on the intranet site and direct them to it
:
Updated:
Only half of all CLOs in the US are promoted from within the legal department
:
Updated:
Four nuances of attributes of “lawyer,” such as in lawyers per billion of revenue
:
Updated:
General counsel straddle the gap between Aristotelian qualities and Baconian quantities
:
Updated:
Total median compensation of a group of general counsel was five times salary
:
Updated:
The role of a law department administrator as go-between with other staff functions
:
Updated:
Dynegy’s legal department bares all its benchmark metrics, and why not?
:
Updated:
Four technology observations based on the bio of a speaker at the upcoming Interact Conference
:
Updated:
A new book on tools to improve the management of your legal department
:
Updated:
Rarely gotten around to: formal succession planning
:
Updated:
50 state survey describes state bar admission requirements for in-house counsel
:
Updated:
Rees Morrison’s Morsels #134: posts longa, morsels breva
:
Updated:
Staff cuts because productivity increases or because legal demand drops off
:
Updated:
Secondments will rise if more firms decide they are a prerequisite to become a partner
:
Updated:
Organizational capital in legal departments and a rating system
:
Updated:
Three more objections to fixed-fee arrangements
:
Updated:
The Birkman Method: a behavioral analysis instrument that could help legal teams
:
Updated:
An article on document assembly, with eight offerings mentioned
:
Updated:
If credit default swaps, why not litigation loss swaps?
:
Updated:
Insights into how legal departments imitate the practices of other departments
:
Updated:
Privileges and two arguments for a separation of much claims work from legal
:
Updated:
Hypothesis: the larger the company, the larger the law firms that represent it and an empirical test proposed
:
Updated:
A couple of points on data about awards to patent holders – trolls vs. practicing entities
:
Updated:
Five arguments against legal departments using non-lawyers for significant tasks, with counter-arguments
:
Updated:
A staffing model for US litigation: barrister, solicitor, case manager, contractor, etc.
:
Updated:
Nine solid rules for good contract drafting from a “Plain English” general counsel
:
Updated:
“Only raise issues that have dollars attached to them” (and four thoughts about that view)
:
Updated:
No faking in the in-house fight against counterfeit and pirated products
:
Updated:
A Qwest for fair billing arrangements – four arguments against fixed fees
:
Updated:
Part XLV of a collection of embedded metaposts
:
Updated:
Two networks of law firms, Law Europe and Ius Laboris
:
Updated:
Why do lawyers in companies believe they hold higher moral standards than other employees?
:
Updated:
Marketers and ‘net fans, hear this blogger discuss blogs and other Web 2.0 methods
:
Updated:
Twenty techniques to bring together a dispersed legal team, and an article to boot
:
Updated:
When a network for lawyers (Legal OnRamp) links up with servicers to law departments (CT Tymetrix)
:
Updated:
Document disassembly (and then document assembly) with Baseline Solutions
:
Updated:
Myth or reality? Smaller legal departments are harder pressed than larger ones
:
Updated:
The right of a legal department to audit invoices of law firms it hires
:
Updated:
Six ideas for rules that control fees billed for intra-firm meetings
:
Updated:
Rees Morrison’s Morsels #133 – posts longa, morsels breva
:
Updated:
Most in-house counsel neither manage nor lead others – they do work
:
Updated:
Five innovations in legal department benchmarking, courtesy of an article in Met. Corp. Counsel
:
Updated:
Honest frustration from a general counsel about a CEO’s proclivity to work directly with outside counsel
:
Updated:
Reporting upward of general counsel
:
Updated:
UK general counsel now more commonly report now to the CEO, Chairman or President
:
Updated:
Learn and retain better when you take a test on material before you study it
:
Updated:
Do not be of good cheer; a foul mood enshrouds a fine lawyer?
:
Updated:
Ten best posts of January 2010 on LawDepartmentManagementBlog
:
Updated:
A report after one month from the largest global benchmark study: more than 300 respondents
:
Updated:
Found by firm: an “overwhelming desire by clients to get to know the associates who work on matters”
:
Updated:
Guidelines from England’s Law Society for those who wish to use the services of management consultants
:
Updated:
General counsel need to know what is going on – two more formal methods
:
Updated:
Industry is key to benchmarking, but poses methodological problems
:
Updated:
Law departments can turn to a full-fledged graphics department at a law firm
:
Updated:
Legal departments of US companies that do business worldwide will steadily disperse around the globe
:
Updated:
Patent agents instead of patent lawyers, and other instances of para-professional substitutions
:
Updated:
GCs who report to the CEO are paid more, and a few thoughts on reasons why
:
Updated:
An intense and complex strategic plan, with no less than 30 indicators
:
Updated:
Quarterly teleconferences for all 165 lawyers of 3M’s far-flung department
:
Updated:
A five-way struggle to entice the general counsel and senior lawyers of major US companies
:
Updated:
Recruit lawyers through an ad in a major trade publication? (Microsoft does)
:
Updated:
Benchmark data from insurance companies and the effects of two accounting systems
:
Updated:
Intriguing idea based on Sabine Chalmers’: post-mortem competitions by law firms
:
Updated:
Smaller departments, pooling their legal spend, might obtain better terms from a firm
:
Updated:
45 percent of Microsoft’s legal fees to be on an alternative fee basis, re general counsel
:
Updated:
Might your legal department benefit from a “pulse” survey?
:
Updated:
To determine the financial stability of a law firm, how far should legal departments inquire?
:
Updated:
Differences between the terms “contract lawyer” and “temporary lawyer”
:
Updated:
Five blogs honored in April 2009 for their focus on legal outsourcing and offshoring
:
Updated:
Benchmarks tend to have incomplete revenue data from privately held companies
:
Updated:
Institutional isomorphism and legal department practices and benchmarks
:
Updated:
Secondary thoughts about “primary law firms”
:
Updated:
Another instance of a firm creating value for clients and licensing it (DLA Piper and UAE laws)
:
Updated:
The five principles to increase employee engagement, and how well they apply to in-house attorneys
:
Updated:
Three innovations from non-US firms about billing and fees
:
Updated:
Spread of managerial effectiveness as law departments become bigger because of more threats and opportunities
:
Updated:
Part XLIV of a collection of embedded metaposts
:
Updated:
You, too, can enjoy the debut issue of Rees Morrison’s monthly newsletter
:
Updated:
Five years; five thousand posts; five hundred thousand page views – High Fives!!
:
Updated:
Reliability of benchmark findings – how representative are the participants?
:
Updated:
Determinants of UK legal function structure: area of law, business unit, or geography
:
Updated:
15 percent more productivity from wide-screen flat-panel LCD monitors (at least in discovery)
:
Updated:
Law departments should favor firms that have automated drafting for complex transactions
:
Updated:
A joint development effort by a legal department and a firm to manage corporate-entity compliance
:
Updated:
Double litigation budgets at DuPont Legal: one for company financials, one for departmental strategy
:
Updated:
Approximately how many lawyers practice in-house, in an organization other than a law firm? Some data
:
Updated:
Approximately how many lawyers in your country practice in-house, in an organization other than a law firm?
:
Updated:
Cost per hour of inside counsel interacts with lawyers as a percentage of all legal staff
:
Updated:
Empirical data plus two key assumptions imply 10,000 legal departments in Europe
:
Updated:
Rees Morrison’s Morsels #132 – posts longa, morsels breva
:
Updated:
Beware the shelf life of law firm evaluations publicly available to others; expiration dates?
:
Updated:
For LPOs you might retain, know the difference between certification and evaluation
:
Updated:
If your law firm serves you globally, consider multiple regional relationship counsel
:
Updated:
Ten more ways to knit up the raveled sleeve of a spread-out legal department
:
Updated:
After three weeks, the largest benchmark study’s median department has nine lawyers and supports $2.3 billion in revenue
:
Updated:
Webcams in legal departments?
:
Updated:
On the order of $4,300 of revenue needed to hire typical outside counsel for an hour
:
Updated:
Commitment contracts as a way to induce lawyers to monitor budgets, alternative fees, discounts, etc.
:
Updated:
An odd ad by a North American legal group on the promotion of their former head to worldwide Chief Legal Officer
:
Updated:
Thoughts on rankings by software of the complexity or value of matters handled by the law department
:
Updated:
Blizzards, winter wonderlands and law departments
:
Updated:
An in-house group united to reform international arbitration
:
Updated:
Do law firms outsource copying to a vendor but receive a financial interest from them?
:
Updated:
The quarterly Litigation Management Report, particularly for claims professionals
:
Updated:
E-billing software that detects “block billing,” and some head scratching by me
:
Updated:
Drawbacks of Uniform Task Based Billing Codes for fees as used by legal departments
:
Updated:
Reliability of basic benchmark data varies – from pretty solid to loosely squishy
:
Updated:
Reliability of basic benchmark data varies – from pretty solid to loosely squishy
:
Updated:
TrialNet, a less-well known matter management system at LegalTech
:
Updated:
A collective on reporting and analysis capabilities for legal departments
:
Updated:
Visual analytics (VA) and its potential (or mirage) to help legal department managers make sense of voluminous data
:
Updated:
General counsel need to state specifics of what to change, not confect confusion
:
Updated:
How many in-house counsel are in the world’s 500 largest corporations? 102,324 – well, some other benchmarks
:
Updated:
Rees Morrison’s Morsels #131 – posts longa, morsels breva
:
Updated:
Different offshore legal sites vary by the languages they support
:
Updated:
A definition of the elements of “process” in Legal Process Offshoring (LPO)
:
Updated:
A definition of the elements of “process” in Legal Process Offshoring (LPO)
:
Updated:
In Germany, 20% discounts but a clawback bonus expected for successful projects
:
Updated:
Five management comments about the law department of Clorox
:
Updated:
Benchmark denominators that pertain to specific industries
:
Updated:
IT functions supporting law departments and law firms share some of the same annoyances
:
Updated:
Do law departments realize that many firms don’t routinely charge back common expenses?
:
Updated:
Project management software aimed specifically at e-discovery
:
Updated:
If you can segment work to be assigned to outside counsel, you are closer to alternative fee arrangements
:
Updated:
Possible ratios of inside to outside lawyers in the US, UK and France
:
Updated:
Ten most intriguing posts (Nov. 2009) from Rees Morrison’s Law Department Management Blog
:
Updated:
Not CYA, but speed sometimes justifies calling a big brand law firm
:
Updated:
The Legal IT Innovators Group, a UK-based organization that could interest some in-house counsel
:
Updated:
You are invited – no cost – to take part in the largest benchmarking database ever assembled for legal departments!
:
Updated:
Public data on bankruptcy billing rates lets you assess whether the discounts you are getting are actual
:
Updated:
Three observations about Kruger Products’ use of Serengeti
:
Updated:
Affinity groups for specialized operational interests of law departments
:
Updated:
During the past year, six articles by this blogger, collected for you to download
:
Updated:
Pushing past the standby of lawyers per billion of revenue
:
Updated:
As a senior lawyer, at your site visit to an LPO provider bring experienced IT and security colleagues
:
Updated:
Four general counsel included among the 100 most influential people in business ethics
:
Updated:
Law firms that are not preferred, hired one-off, should not get away scot free on terms
:
Updated:
Readability of documents prepared by lawyers expressed as its school grade level
:
Updated:
Fear of being seen as a “sales person” inhibits general counsel from portraying the value of their department
:
Updated:
Non-practicing entities (patent trolls), backed by third parties, operate in Germany
:
Updated:
European legal departments fail to ask their law firms to develop specialized technology
:
Updated:
Surprisingly, IT spend and staffing in legal departments about matches that in large UK law firms
:
Updated:
UK data on lawyers and their revenue suggest that the law hasn’t gotten more complex over the past two decades
:
Updated:
All 420 metaposts from this blog are available on my website, ReesMorrison.com
:
Updated:
Five additions to the 16 initiatives to save costs on external counsel ranked by effectiveness
:
Updated:
Do legal departments pay law firms more quickly than their companies pay other vendors?
:
Updated:
A network of nine law firms in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS)
:
Updated:
Frequent obstacle to alternative fees? Software and management can’t handle it?
:
Updated:
Sixteen initiatives to save costs on external counsel ranked by effectiveness
:
Updated:
Offshoring legal services from London to Israel, although it might be hard to tell
:
Updated:
Administrators can only go so far with some initiatives to save costs on external counsel
:
Updated:
My recent profundities on characteristics of metrics used by general counsel
:
Updated:
A fixed fee with Hewlett-Packard to handle employment, property, and medium-sized litigation
:
Updated:
I’d like to meet you at the Bloggers Breakfast at LegalTech NYC at 9AM on Feb. 3rd
:
Updated:
Checklists, practical tools with enormous (under-used) benefit for lawyers
:
Updated:
Once again, courtesy of Mitratech a no-cost download of my blog book on outside counsel management
:
Updated:
Unsurprising but hard to believe: administrators say how much they save their departments
:
Updated:
A handy distinction between fixed fees and flat fees (plus unit fees)
:
Updated:
Alternative fee arrangements lead the way in ROI according to research, especially fixed fees
:
Updated:
Rees Morrison’s Morsels #130 – posts longa, morsels breva
:
Updated:
A metapost on law firms retained in foreign countries
:
Updated:
The International Legal Technology Association (ILTA) and its Law Department Practice Group
:
Updated:
Four boasts by law firms that turn few heads of prospective clients
:
Updated:
As a marketing pitch, full service is empty according to European general counsel
:
Updated:
Large-scale survey lists 30 contract terms most frequently negotiated
:
Updated:
Pricing information shared about law firms by 22 UK government legal departments
:
Updated:
As an army travels on its stomach, so does one legal department with its recipe for engagement
:
Updated:
A view that managing organizational complexity is a top priority of general counsel
:
Updated:
A legal executive committee to help manage HSBC’s huge legal department
:
Updated:
Limits to how far in-house counsel should camouflage themselves among clients
:
Updated:
Hours purchased per amount spent cannot be the measure of a relationship’s success
:
Updated:
A rule of thumb for presentations by law firms – 1/3rd talk, 2/3rd answer questions
:
Updated:
Reverse secondments as a training method for legal departments
:
Updated:
Now, legal departments select law firms based in part on the firm’s environmental stance
:
Updated:
Outsourcing inside a far-flung Nestlé’s legal team, and three consequences
:
Updated:
An example from risk management of how easy it is to urge impossible tasks
:
Updated:
Whistling in the dark about legal risk management by UK heads of legal
:
Updated:
Methods to identify, measure, and review legal risks
:
Updated:
Shallow recommendations amidst many findings about legal risk and compliance
:
Updated:
Incumbent rate negotiations diverge from challenger rate negotiations
:
Updated:
Questionable whether a general counsel should market and manage a new service line
:
Updated:
In the noise about Pfizer’s massive fixed-fee arrangement, a whispered question
:
Updated:
Three law firms formed a collective to bill Pfizer as a single firm
:
Updated:
Recruitment costs for legal departments – two percent of salary for junior lawyers?
:
Updated:
The fewer the firms you retain, the more you need to intervene in their personnel management decisions
:
Updated:
“Core/non-core” compared to “critical mission” when general counsel decide what to handle inside
:
Updated:
Two advantages of fixed fees for the law firm: more flexibility in management and freedom to take initiatives
:
Updated:
Collective evaluations of law firms will inevitably bend to serve the rating organization’s goals
:
Updated:
Two aspects of relationship partners: involvement in matters and formality of contacts
:
Updated:
A Ning from Estonia that has 600+ IP-related blogs on it!
:
Updated:
Three quotes about metrics and a short riff thereon
:
Updated:
Drawing on research about CEOs, better to promote general counsel from within than hire from without?
:
Updated:
Not “lawyers per formal management initiatives” but “one initiative for every other direct report”
:
Updated:
Clients request legal services through an online portal and can see all the contracts that exist
:
Updated:
Low morale? Sometimes consider an employee engagement survey
:
Updated:
Unusual determinants of a law firm’s reputation: corporate citizenship and ethical standards
:
Updated:
Benchmarks for M&A transactions that might shape bonus arrangements
:
Updated:
Looks like a long wait for evidence-based management (EB Mgt.) to inform general counsel
:
Updated:
Data on the costs of intellectual property litigation and recent increases
:
Updated:
Survey your law firms, but observe some courtesies
:
Updated:
The three disciplines that best explain law department operations (economics, psychology, and sociology)
:
Updated:
Ten most stellar posts from LawDepartmentManagementBlog during November 2009
:
Updated:
Seventh set of bloggers I thank for having referred visitors to Law Department Management Blog
:
Updated:
LinkedIn Groups for lawyers – 35 and counting (join mine!)
:
Updated:
Rees Morrison’s Morsels #129 – posts longa, morsels breva
:
Updated:
The longer the litigation, the higher the fees – but a linear relationship?
:
Updated:
How hard it is to spot trends from data in a matter management system
:
Updated:
Thoughts on different goals of outsourcing, offshoring and unbundling by legal departments
:
Updated:
Four observations from an article about Bodhi Global Services, an LPO
:
Updated:
Blook review through multiple posts of Unbound
:
Updated:
Metaphor of metrics: thermometer or thermostat
:
Updated:
Alternatives to the term “alternative billing”
:
Updated:
Public disclosure of spending, firms, cases, etc: where’s the harm? Mostly internal knives!
:
Updated:
Ratio of US to non-US law firms, law firms per billion, and concentration at UTC
:
Updated:
Go green, stay healthy, boost productivity in the legal department
:
Updated:
Client groups that heavily use the legal department could have “pre-legal vetting teams”
:
Updated:
Some general counsel thoughtfully restrict the responsibilities of the legal department
:
Updated:
Rees Morrison’s Morsels #128 – posts longa, morsels breva
:
Updated:
Ratios of three common types of civil litigation for a manufacturing – 30% each?
:
Updated:
Offices and countries of dispersed legal departments – UTC’s metrics
:
Updated:
Three common delusions that confound our decision-making
:
Updated:
The International In-House Counsel Journal – substantive and management content by in-house attorneys
:
Updated:
The chief legal officer and local management should combine to recruit a local lawyer
:
Updated:
Four more simple steps to save energy, i.e., coal and emissions
:
Updated:
Maligned as mere draftsperson, UK in-house counsel aspire to greater prominence
:
Updated:
Free copy of my blook on outside counsel management, available courtesy of Mitratech
:
Updated:
More on rankings and honors for this blog — Wikio
:
Updated:
Canadian patent cases cost millions less than US patent cases
:
Updated:
Rees Morrison’s Morsels #127 – posts longa, morsels breva
:
Updated:
A contrarian argument for why in-house lawyers are more independent than external counsel
:
Updated:
What is a “risk management checklist”?
:
Updated:
RFPs are better if they include some benchmarks
:
Updated:
A good number of law firms to invite to compete for work – nine
:
Updated:
The risk of misunderstanding conditional probabilities – an example from legal departments
:
Updated:
No dramatic change seen by general counsel in use of contract or temporary staff
:
Updated:
Metcalf’s Law and the increasing value of benchmark studies with more participants
:
Updated:
High potentials, but potential for what? Information processing, which good lawyers do well
:
Updated:
Trivial cost-reduction steps commonly reported by legal departments in survey
:
Updated:
Part XLIII of a collection of embedded metaposts
:
Updated:
Don’t just hoover up facts, think about the decision you face and how best to make it
:
Updated:
“Law departments are twenty years out of touch with best-in-class processes”
:
Updated:
Solo lawyers in outposts need to be senior
:
Updated:
Head lawyers in a department for broad geographic regions
:
Updated:
Ask your company’s marketing department to help you upgrade your brand image??
:
Updated:
The complexity of the notion of full-time equivalent (FTE)
:
Updated:
Four more ideas to improve your e-mail effectiveness
:
Updated:
Rating law firms – learn from a clever rating system of arbitrators and mediators
:
Updated:
SEC Commissioner: “I hope [companies] maintain strong – they probably need stronger – legal in-house capabilities.”
:
Updated:
Shouldn’t law departments reciprocate prompt billing with prompt payment?
:
Updated:
Four remarks about the legal function at Johnson & Johnson
:
Updated:
A report based on interviews with 22 general counsel of major European companies
:
Updated:
A huge number of e-billers does not make an “online community of legal professionals”
:
Updated:
The shift to have legal gumshoes match the corporate footprint – lawyers spread where the business is
:
Updated:
Rees Morrison’s Morsels #126 – posts longa, morsels breva
:
Updated:
Global CLOs and the punishing level of travel required
:
Updated:
R&D spend, patent licensing revenue and the law department as profit center
:
Updated:
A small, paradoxical step to improve productivity: leave time between meetings
:
Updated:
Consider a per diem charge by law firm lawyers to cover all their meals
:
Updated:
A budget for all legal services handled by law firms and client approval of the budgets!?
:
Updated:
LawBidding: no-cost site for law departments to post questions about legal issues and receive proposals
:
Updated:
Two technologies for nabbing IP bandits
:
Updated:
Workarounds on knowledge management for law departments – pull it don’t push it
:
Updated:
The rising tide of billing rate rollbacks demanded by legal departments
:
Updated:
Rising expectations of law departments regarding speed of response by themselves and law firms
:
Updated:
Encourage good conflicts at staff meetings, and an insightful method to improve
:
Updated:
Putative metrics on cost control efforts, but numerous questions about their usefulness
:
Updated:
Fingerprint identification to log on to a laptop!
:
Updated:
Fixed fee arrangements insisted on by Telstra’s legal team
:
Updated:
A sizeable internship program for diversity candidates at Bristol-Myers Squibb
:
Updated:
Diversity: Coca-Cola’s law department and its best-in-class evaluation of “partner” firms
:
Updated:
Ten best posts of October 2009 on LawDepartmentManagmentBlog
:
Updated:
If procurement (sourcing) wants to make inroads on legal spend, it has to team with the legal group
:
Updated:
The end of hefty annual increases in total cash compensation for in-house attorneys
:
Updated:
“R&D intensity” – a benchmark, but does it include the legal costs of IP development and protection?
:
Updated:
Do in-house counsels really spend more than 20 percent of their time looking for things?
:
Updated:
Do you want to see a marketing person at the pitch by a law firm? No
:
Updated:
Implications if there is a clustering of settlement amounts in litigation
:
Updated:
Law departments free-ride on law firms’ huge associate recruiting and training costs
:
Updated:
A deep thanks to all of you who helped this blog be chosen as an ABA Journal Blawg 100
:
Updated:
A view opposed to my own about getting bills in draft from law firms
:
Updated:
Growth over four years in the number of offshore legal service companies in India
:
Updated:
More than $60 billion spent in the US to prepare documents for discovery?
:
Updated:
Clients string out litigation costs because delayed settlement is financially smarter?
:
Updated:
Minimum loss of $14,000 every time a law firm lawyer leaves your team
:
Updated:
Retain a litigation project manager, not from a law firm, but perhaps from Australia
:
Updated:
Four cost control techniques from a survey of small law departments
:
Updated:
Six basic steps based on talent for a general counsel to improve departmental productivity
:
Updated:
Convergence just short of total outsourcing at Levi Strauss
:
Updated:
“Well-done ECA (early case assessment) uncovers 80% of what you will ever know”
:
Updated:
Large disbursements paid directly instead of through law firms should be deemed outside costs
:
Updated:
Any logic to adjusting volume discount levels to the overall rates of a firm?
:
Updated:
In-house counsel: quick to list key attributes generally of outside counsel, slow to assess specific firms they use
:
Updated:
Rees Morrison’s Morsels #125 – posts longa, morsels breva
:
Updated:
Rough-cut numbers from a legal department benchmark survey confirm typical metrics
:
Updated:
Everyone likes to be praised, even outside counsel you use frequently
:
Updated:
“Tort tourism”: in-house lawyers will find themselves defending cases in adverse jurisdictions
:
Updated:
Clocks – a fundamental difference: inside lawyers control it, outside lawyers slave for it
:
Updated:
Different views on the appropriateness of methods to freeze billing rates
:
Updated:
Borrowing from evidence-based medicine, let’s foster evidence-based management
:
Updated:
A suggestion about the value equation law departments and law firms are struggling over
:
Updated:
Too many faceless general counsel
:
Updated:
Plenum spaces and pony walls: ways lighting and sound affect the productivity of workers
:
Updated:
Four more environmentally progressive ideas that legal departments might adopt
:
Updated:
To strengthen your company and improve the quality of your work, train your clients
:
Updated:
Train clients or members of the legal department using “spaced education”
:
Updated:
One of this year’s Nobel prizes for economics speaks to the make-or-buy choice for legal services
:
Updated:
Some recent firsts on or about this blog
:
Updated:
Why set restrictions on firms if you can’t monitor or enforce them?
:
Updated:
Problems with asking in-house attorneys to cut their individual budgets from the prior year’s level
:
Updated:
A hyperpost – collection of metaposts – on general counsel
:
Updated:
Two more speculations on consequences most in-house lawyers growing up in law firms
:
Updated:
Vexatious value: my article on law firm value and eleven propositions
:
Updated:
Is a benchmark metric of average number of matters per firm meaningful?
:
Updated:
Seven variations on rate freezes from the traditional choice of one or two years
:
Updated:
More books, from a while ago, about effective operations in legal departments
:
Updated:
Lists on Twitter and their use for in-house counsel
:
Updated:
“Radiohead billing” or pay what you think the law firm’s service was worth
:
Updated:
Intriguing ideas from two parts of a three-part lump sum arrangement with a law firm
:
Updated:
Beyond 5,000 posts, and a menagerie of metrics about my RSS feed readers
:
Updated:
Which benchmarks in-house counsel find most useful – take my poll before you peek at the early results
:
Updated:
Sixth set of blogs that have referred visitors to Law Department Management Blog
:
Updated:
5,000 posts (!), a million+ words (!!), and 55 months (!!!) on this blog
:
Updated:
Software providers to legal departments sometimes partner with consulting firms trained on their products
:
Updated:
The holy grail, ineffable and unattainable, of an ROI calculation for an entire legal department
:
Updated:
Clarification on the amount of time at work that general counsel are committed by others
:
Updated:
If we can’t nail down historical “facts,” we can’t presume to convey best practices
:
Updated:
A framework for improved decisions
:
Updated:
Criticism of the reporting lines of Bank of America’s beleaguered general counsel
:
Updated:
A prompt-acceptance advantage to be on a panel, but quite a drubbing on fees!
:
Updated:
Siemens’ general counsel also acts as the CEO of its U.S. division (sic)
:
Updated:
The in-house career conundrum, but some finer points about paths
:
Updated:
Six personality reasons why change may be particularly difficult in legal departments
:
Updated:
In broad terms, how general counsel allocate their time
:
Updated:
End of year offer for law department management blooks – buy one, get two free
:
Updated:
Survivor trauma and sometimes the laid-off are better off
:
Updated:
The larger the legal department, the less the general counsel does hands-on legal work
:
Updated:
Are general counsel of moderate-size departments personally involved in half the choices of law firms?
:
Updated:
Benchmark goals change behavior and sometimes reveal the plasticity of numbers
:
Updated:
A new country for LPO suppliers, this time New Zealand
:
Updated:
A bracelet that tells you when you are too emotionally caught up in a decision or situation
:
Updated:
Merged law departments sometimes face limits on how much the cost basis can increase
:
Updated:
Net rating scores based on evaluations of outside counsel at GE Canada
:
Updated:
A heavy subject, weighting survey responses and other data
:
Updated:
Arguments for and against tracking internal time
:
Updated:
Rees Morrison’s Morsels #124 – posts longa, morsels breva
:
Updated:
Consumer surplus, another term for “value” from law firms
:
Updated:
Costs of arbitrators as compared to costs of presenting the arbitration case (almost 1 to 4)
:
Updated:
Licensing patents may be a pot o’ gold for a few, but it’s usually over the rainbow
:
Updated:
Metrics on parade: broad benchmarks, specialized data, departmental numbers and ad hoc requests
:
Updated:
Going beyond your skill and knowledge level is not a risk just for in-house lawyers
:
Updated:
Pros and cons of Requests for Services from clients
:
Updated:
Overall performance evaluations less useful than aggregated partial evaluations
:
Updated:
A neat way to keep your outside counsel guidelines current: embed online references
:
Updated:
Malpractice recoveries by law departments
:
Updated:
Capable general counsel combine leadership and management
:
Updated:
Global contracting staff outnumber legal staff by two to one (CSC) – a useful metric?
:
Updated:
Evaluating recent posts on evaluations of law firms
:
Updated:
Report-outs that out lawyers who flout e-billing rules for outside counsel
:
Updated:
When in-house counsel assess the performance of a firm, push them to give specific examples
:
Updated:
Evaluate firms on attributes, but also ask your attorneys to say how important those attributes are
:
Updated:
Wal-Mart to require outside law firms to have flextime policies – over-reaching?
:
Updated:
In-house lawyers may deal constantly with corporate policies, but win no friends
:
Updated:
Part XLII of a collection of embedded metaposts
:
Updated:
Prospects for a reliable pool of comments about the performance of law firms
:
Updated:
How to push good faith efforts by in-house lawyers to do a decent job on law firm evaluations
:
Updated:
How can matter management systems average an ROI of 36% of outside counsel spend?
:
Updated:
Ten posts that interested this blogger the most from September 2009
:
Updated:
A choice for evaluations of law firms: by passage of time, at conclusion of major matters, or a mix
:
Updated:
Do you know enough to know when you don’t know enough and ought to retain outside counsel?
:
Updated:
“Do more with less” – heard all the time but dare we probe a bit?
:
Updated:
Pay for software now, but maybe wait years for organizational changes to take full advantage of it
:
Updated:
Twists and turns when general counsel measure the accuracy of law firm budgets for matters
:
Updated:
Possible purchase by unit of UK bank of CPA Global, one of the largest Indian LPOs
:
Updated:
Corporate policies and legal departments
:
Updated:
Six practical steps to kill the kudzu of corporate policies
:
Updated:
Help wanted on blog posts about records retention and legal department management
:
Updated:
To cut information overload, general counsel like short lists of things to do or consider
:
Updated:
You’re goofing off if you read this post while at work
:
Updated:
Strategic plans for legal departments revisited on length and implementation
:
Updated:
Shortcomings of the ubiquitous benchmark metric, lawyers per billion of revenue
:
Updated:
Credentials and professionalism on the ascendancy in legal departments
:
Updated:
A benchmark based on an index of how distributed is a department’s spend on external counsel
:
Updated:
Definition of a strategic plan and some implications for general counsel
:
Updated:
How to tell if a correlation between two sets of numbers is statistically significant
:
Updated:
Sponsored links when you Google matter management systems and legal departments
:
Updated:
CEOs vis-à-vis the legal department
:
Updated:
Punctuated equilibrium in legal departments
:
Updated:
Open-source software may actually be open-wallet software
:
Updated:
Principal determinants of the number of direct reports to a general counsel
:
Updated:
Whether general counsel can be objective about how they managed and why
:
Updated:
Philosophical views on our ability to express and organize law department management
:
Updated:
Metrics are just numbers; benchmarks are metrics that compare you and inform you
:
Updated:
Part XLI of a collection of embedded metaposts
:
Updated:
Get invoices in final form, not drafts that are then resent after review
:
Updated:
Some unpleasant sides of people management in legal departments
:
Updated:
“Legal process outsourcing is a $4 billion industry,” according to Xerox’s general counsel
:
Updated:
The improvidence of a separate group that only audits and reviews bills
:
Updated:
“A given level of business activity generates this much legal work”
:
Updated:
A 23% “incremental value creation” from an RFP-cum-convergence process
:
Updated:
More suggestions about how to listen effectively
:
Updated:
Identify “components” of matters and request firms to bill them on a fixed fee
:
Updated:
Unusual expenses ineligible to be billed according to outside counsel guidelines
:
Updated:
Free benchmark report; total legal spend per regional lawyer compared for EMEA and Asia-Pacific
:
Updated:
New document assembly offering online, at no cost (WhichDraft.com)
:
Updated:
Four techniques — staffing models — when you manage a law firm on a matter
:
Updated:
Why law firms agree to volume discounts and thus the leverage legal departments enjoy
:
Updated:
Seek oral advice from your law firms, unless you expressly request a memorandum
:
Updated:
An extranet that goes beyond what a matter management system typically shows
:
Updated:
An online decision tree for import/export law, and the potential for similar systems
:
Updated:
Value perceptions and keeping up with price changes
:
Updated:
Eight ways to improve your revenue-per-lawyer benchmark metric
:
Updated:
Further ruminations on value delivered by law firms
:
Updated:
Online dispute resolution (the double-blind method) and benefits for legal departments
:
Updated:
In-house lawyers are untrained project managers and process analysts
:
Updated:
Rees Morrison’s Morsels #123 – posts longa, morsels breva
:
Updated:
Three calculations that benchmark analysts should use
:
Updated:
Increase in total legal spending in 2008 mostly tracked increases in compensation
:
Updated:
Three critical attributes for attracting and engaging employees
:
Updated:
An index of collegiality and camaraderie in a legal department and what it might indicate
:
Updated:
How to figure the ROI of CLE, if we had some benchmark data
:
Updated:
The second-mover advantage and law department practices
:
Updated:
Considerations when you assign a lawyer to oversee the relationship with a primary firm
:
Updated:
Document assembly as a solution to contract management challenges
:
Updated:
Heat maps as a way to portray risks of litigation
:
Updated:
On this blog, a premium on discount posts
:
Updated:
Call legal departments “global” if they have 25%+ of their lawyers on two other continents
:
Updated:
Someday, a formula regarding international revenue and in-house lawyers overseas
:
Updated:
Five publicly-traded companies that consult heavily to legal departments
:
Updated:
Speculation on consequences if law departments demand large numbers of secondments
:
Updated:
Considerations other than financial about tiered discounts vs. billing rate discounts
:
Updated:
Methods of buyers to identify and learn more about professional service providers
:
Updated:
No way do finance people in-house and at law firms “reach understandings on the pricing model”
:
Updated:
Comparison of volume discounts to hourly rate discounts
:
Updated:
Microsoft’s legal layoffs and some questions on the savings metrics
:
Updated:
When law firms pitch you for business, help them avoid the three most important gaffes
:
Updated:
3-4 times more law firms retained by U.S. legal departments than non-U.S. departments?
:
Updated:
The top 17 litigation funds, according to Litigation Funds & Asset Recovery blog
:
Updated:
Can lawyers not admitted to practice in the United States serve as a US “general counsel”?
:
Updated:
Tightening a loose statement about litigation spend by US compared to non-US legal departments
:
Updated:
“One-shot deals are very, very expensive” – including legal departments paying law firms on major matters
:
Updated:
Two views on whether facilities costs or technology costs are larger for legal departments
:
Updated:
Contrary to an author’s suggestion, I doubt GCs make regular pilgrimages to their key law firms
:
Updated:
Law departments could encourage law firms to expand their share of pocket in return for discounts in new areas
:
Updated:
Law departments, enjoying some free IT and HR support, have lower costs than law firms
:
Updated:
An online repository of millions of trademarked logos, names and slogans
:
Updated:
A hyperpost on six of the non-GC titles and levels in legal departments
:
Updated:
A worrisome idea: a bonus scheme for associates who exceed a quarterly threshold of billable hours
:
Updated:
Ten most thoughtful posts of August 2009 on Law Department Management Blog
:
Updated:
Contract management and its four key concerns for legal departments
:
Updated:
Negotiation skills benefit in-house counsel
:
Updated:
Lawyers aren’t particularly desired as members of Boards of Directors; few legal committees
:
Updated:
Loyalty to legal profession at odds with loyalty to the company that employs them
:
Updated:
Rees Morrison’s Morsels #122 – additions to earlier posts and short takes
:
Updated:
28 years ago Bob Banks and eight other in-house counsel started what has become ACC
:
Updated:
A huge company that only chooses partners from a law firm to become general counsel
:
Updated:
General counsel should encourage law students to consider careers in-house
:
Updated:
Seven recommendations for how to have successful technology projects in your department
:
Updated:
Sometimes outside counsel guidelines need to bend, but not be burdened with statements of the option
:
Updated:
Currency inflation and how legal departments should adjust financial metrics from the past
:
Updated:
“Make the most of our assets, play at the top of our game” improves on “be best-in-class”
:
Updated:
More new thinking on innovation in legal departments
:
Updated:
Innovation defined and differences between technological and administrative steps
:
Updated:
A claim: add a legal fees “business manager” and see hourly rates paid decline nine percent
:
Updated:
The longer the tenure of lawyers in a legal department, the lower the company’s total legal expenses
:
Updated:
Secretaries and admins
:
Updated:
Part XXXX of a collection of embedded metaposts
:
Updated:
“What are the three most important things I need to do today?” and give reports time budgets
:
Updated:
An attempt to quiet two mantras: “Hire the firm, not the partner” and “Don’t blame me, I hired Prestige Firm X”
:
Updated:
Benchmark data and the pernicious “Law of Small Numbers”
:
Updated:
Likelihood that general counsel push significant changes in their early years
:
Updated:
More objections to notion of best practices: assumptions of givens, boundaries, and common measures
:
Updated:
What’s in the castle? What’s inside in-house lawyer’s individual offices?
:
Updated:
Physical components of legal departments other than individual offices
:
Updated:
Thoughts on why in-house counsel may be risk averse
:
Updated:
Invoice lasagna – tasty narrative stuff on top, scrumptious recaps at the bottom, noodles in between
:
Updated:
Rees Morrison’s Morsels #121 – additions to earlier posts and short takes
:
Updated:
Needed: independent audits of benchmark methodology, data, and basis for conclusions
:
Updated:
My three blooks deserve readers, so try at no cost the table of contents and first chapter
:
Updated:
A dramatic example where lawyers saying no may have hurt a company
:
Updated:
Quality-adjusted and inflation-adjusted legal fees may have remained fairly stable over recent years
:
Updated:
The Dunbar number – above 150 members in a legal department, hard to maintain strong ties among themselves
:
Updated:
Managing lawyers in house who are competitive and egotistical
:
Updated:
Make the most of the billing recap at the end of each invoice
:
Updated:
Even for micro-managing control freaks, who needs weekly “quick-look” billing summaries?
:
Updated:
A risk assessment tree within 60 days after the filing of a complaint
:
Updated:
To set you thinking: guidelines for the number of core staff scaled to fees projected on a matter
:
Updated:
Most-favored nation status should apply, if at all, only on a fee volume basis
:
Updated:
The cascade from corporate goals down to individual lawyer objectives
:
Updated:
Goldilocks in-boxes — legal work that balances challenges and churns
:
Updated:
Burbling rocks and water sounds inspire poetic reveries
:
Updated:
My article on the esoterica of power-law distributions (exponential indices, anyone?)
:
Updated:
The kinds of mistakes that get you fired, and the mistakes that legal departments accept
:
Updated:
“Broken deal” fee reductions for transactions that don’t get done
:
Updated:
Various ways to handle discounts given by law firms
:
Updated:
Posts on creativity since my last accumulation
:
Updated:
The status “Of Counsel” has no significance for lawyers in legal departments who manage outside counsel
:
Updated:
Would an all-star legal department result in lower total legal spending as a percentage of revenue?
:
Updated:
Total legal spending as a percentage of revenues has remained relatively constant over past five years
:
Updated:
Differences between benchmark comparisons on industry, revenue, and number of lawyers
:
Updated:
Management decisions rest on social values of the manager
:
Updated:
On my bucket list, ten metrics about outside counsel spend I hope I learn eventually
:
Updated:
Actions a general counsel can take once she spots a block of commodity services
:
Updated:
Unbelievable! Legal departments don’t expect action from law firms, just “open discussions”
:
Updated:
An operating guide for support staff in a law department, perhaps
:
Updated:
Beware folks who are dim bulbs, unaware volts are dimmed bulbs
:
Updated:
Rees Morrison’s Morsels #120 – additions to earlier posts and short takes
:
Updated:
A clever chart that shows your department on three comparisons as to nine benchmarks
:
Updated:
Clients are from Pluto, lawyers from Mercury – huge personality differences mean change is due
:
Updated:
Quite a project for me to manage my posts on project management
:
Updated:
Assertion that average legal department cut nearly 17 percent of their law firms in 2009
:
Updated:
Ten alternatives to executive search firms to recruit lawyers for your department
:
Updated:
More information about the Belgian Post’s litigation management program
:
Updated:
Eight reasons why partners might not offer good ideas for how legal departments can improve
:
Updated:
Insights into the HSBC offshoring to Malaysia of branch support
:
Updated:
More details on the Rio Tinto offshoring deal with CPA Global
:
Updated:
Two benefits of LPOs sometimes overlooked – better work remains and technology gets funded
:
Updated:
Almost a decade ago, some up-to-date cost control measures – has much changed?
:
Updated:
How an offshore legal service provider can help organize your tangle of contracts
:
Updated:
Good advice about law-student internships
:
Updated:
The neuroscience of why stories persuade and teach clients more enduringly than facts and numbers
:
Updated:
Even in well-trodden bankruptcy, with public data and hearings, the value of lawyers is frustratingly hard to figure out
:
Updated:
“Trolls demanding tolls”: thoughts on markets where third parties invest in legal assets
:
Updated:
Be of good chair! If you can, seat yourself on an ergonomic seat to boost your productivity and health
:
Updated:
Project management software doesn’t necessarily mean the discipline of project management
:
Updated:
Let me publicize your law department’s licensing specialized software or if you sold a department a package
:
Updated:
Two ways to state a trend of less spend on outside counsel, medians and percentages
:
Updated:
Historical data about inefficient representations don’t help RFPs provide a useful picture of costs
:
Updated:
The ACC Value Challenge may have been co-opted by the law firms involved
:
Updated:
Part XXXIX of a collection of embedded metaposts
:
Updated:
Ten good questions to answer when you take on a secondee from a law firm
:
Updated:
Email box for members of a legal department to obtain work from clients, or not pick up work??
:
Updated:
Nurture an external network of people you can talk to about management issues
:
Updated:
A hyperpost on statistics made up of seven metaposts
:
Updated:
10 free courses to learn more about statistics
:
Updated:
What controlling costs of outside counsel is NOT
:
Updated:
Infrequent problems with external counsel, given by Asia-Pacific survey respondents
:
Updated:
Reasons given infrequently in Asia Pacific for why external counsel was selected
:
Updated:
Keys to effectiveness: role clarity, division of labor, core competencies, delegation, resources, and processes
:
Updated:
The posts just keep on rolling about rolling averages
:
Updated:
No grounds for “moving away from the RFP mentality of too many law departments”
:
Updated:
One-third splits are predictable when you ask a group of GCs any question about the future
:
Updated:
A doughty, we-can-do-it-ourselves ethos puts quality of legal services provided in doubt
:
Updated:
Minimum department size recommended by book is two
:
Updated:
Data from Asia-Pacific legal departments about their size distribution
:
Updated:
My ten most interesting posts during July 2009
:
Updated:
Eight basic categories of legal department software
:
Updated:
Rees Morrison’s Morsels #119 – additions to earlier posts and short takes
:
Updated:
Off-hand advice, not off-putting at all, on the off-chance that you deal off the cuff with off-the-main-road areas of the law
:
Updated:
Calculating ROI benefits and costs (Part Two of Two) – By guest author Steven Levy
:
Updated:
Calculating ROI benefits and costs (Part One of Two) – By guest author Steven Levy
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How does the Office of the Blogger feel about the term “The Office of the General Counsel”?
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Update with 48 posts that have contacts with contracts
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Even a narrow niche like corporate secretarial functions has oodles of software
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Metrics you might want to analyze about use of your department’s legal intranet
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Research that some in-house career paths need to end; mandatory retirement policies?
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Allow for the time-value of money in ROI calculations
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Increased use of legal support offshore threatens in-house jobs at home
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Effective billing rates adjusted for a law firm’s city cost of living?
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Seven high-level similarities between contract management and matter management systems
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The open-book approach to reaching a flat-fee agreement with a firm
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A haiku on legal department management – pith in 17 poetic syllables
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A law firm that takes on a major block of work might set up an office near the client’s executives
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Working backwards from a figure of $4 billion to be spent on e-discovery software and services
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Two-week free offer for my just-published blook on law department structure
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A vacation picture of this blogger, his wife and his son (August 2009)
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Ask your primary law firms to submit a periodic “value report”?
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A fixture of fixed prices, inflated cost estimates to cover a risk premium and contingencies?
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Why aren’t more law firm lawyers paying attention to this blog — how their legal department clients operate?
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Part XXXVIII of a collection of embedded metaposts
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Track time by percentages instead of by actual numbers of hours
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Pros and cons of publicity for your legal department’s management initiatives
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If members of the legal department feel engaged, they will perform better
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Five more tricks for the e-mail pro(ductivity)
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Avoid fragmented imbecility: to think hard, ignore email, refuse phone calls, and close the door
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Thirty (30) suggestions for better e-mail effectiveness
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Blook review on the four-volumes edited by Robert Haig of Successful Partnering
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Short half-life of an in-house lawyer’s knowledge is a long exaggeration
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Various uses of scenarios for managers of in-house legal teams
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Budgets by firms, being forecasts, degrade quickly as you extend their timeframe
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Analyze ROI periodically during technology projects
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A questionable claim that more lawyers cuts outside spend in half, or that they are one-third the cost
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Rees Morrison’s Morsels #118 – additions to earlier posts and short takes
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Further explanation about legal risk, productivity and careful review of email
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Pessimistic findings for legal departments that want to create their own e-discovery team
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We need to clarify the term “dedicated IT support”
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Adoption of technology goes beyond implementation of technology
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When collected and analyzed, each metric can harm someone
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Four crucial but ill-defined words often used by general counsel: complexity, risk, quality, and value
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Law departments as “complex systems”
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Quality of similar-size firms varies less than their cost
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A statement to sign for commitment to pro bono involvement by a legal department
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Posts on the value law firms deliver compared to the fees paid them
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Back references to unproven beliefs (myths) regarding management of legal departments and their firms
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Fifth set of 13 blogs that have referred visitors to Law Department Management Blog
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Statements by general counsel of support for good causes: ADR, diversity, billing standards, etc.
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During discovery, inside counsel might encounter limited access to adversary’s confidential information
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Online patent tool at Cisco lets engineers help with patenting process
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Rees Morrison’s Morsels #117 – additions to earlier posts and short takes
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A trademark of this blog, metaposts, and here is one on trademarks
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Collaboration between a legal department and its law firms on the department’s intranet
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A questionable rule of thumb on make-buy: the inside cost should be one-third of the outside cost
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The 5-10 minute rule for important email messages, but it destroys productivity
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More books read and drawn on for this blog
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Innovators face low odds of success, but legal departments need to keep trying new ideas
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Expounding on legal risk management
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When managing law departments, how many practices exist? Thousands!
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Performance mapping and key competencies
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Part XXXVII of a collection of embedded metaposts
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More reMarx on DAS KAPITAL – human, social, organizational, and physical
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No tiers on my pillow: flaws of tiered discounts from hourly rates based on volume
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A book of myths that endanger external counsel, and three that in-house counsel would endorse
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You’ll feel so much better if you understand employee satisfaction
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The irony of cost parity between US contract attorneys and LPO attorneys [Bob Unterberger]
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Rees Morrison’s Morsels #116 – additions to earlier posts and short takes
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Risk management differs from compliance and internal audit – but from legal?
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Blook reviews of Trapp and Page on external counsel and Leeson on pirate economics
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Voice, governance, involvement influenced by the size of a law department
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The rational-choice model of economists as a framework for understanding legal departments
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Secondments are not only associates but also of partners
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An argument, based on experience, for competitive fixed bids saving 10-15 percent of fees
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A tradeoff, or a ratio, between inside fully-loaded costs and outside payments
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A surfeit of posts on budgets
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Just-in-time budgeting with four methods
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Rees Morrison’s Morsels #114 – additions to earlier posts and short takes
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Doubts about a six-out-of-ten rating of external counsel regarding their ‘value for money’
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Operating costs of legal departments compared to those of law firms
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A one-to-one ratio and a significant operations department (Abbott)
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A tool to explain e-discovery metrics and an encouragement to save money with lower-cost staff
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Dispersed benefits for a lawyer from external cost control, but concentrated costs
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The economist’s “signal” by departments when they announce they retain large law firms
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Transaction-cost economics have broad applicability in legal department management
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Eight myths procurement professionals harbor about US legal departments
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Client service by walking around: get off the Blackberry and talk to clients in their offices
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32 steps each legal department can take to protect the environment (and reduce costs)
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Don’t send RFPs to law firms, thinking it is a courtesy, when they aren’t really in contention
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A favorable byproduct of convergence: more opportunity for collective evaluations of firms
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LawProspector data on significant federal litigation and uses for general counsel
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Another blog book review (blook review?) – 13 posts on Managing the Modern Law Firm
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A journalistic charge against partnering firms, but where is the support for it?
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Research: embedded ties between law firms and departments lower rates yet can increase firm profits
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Board member training in ethics and compliance, often conducted by the general counsel
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Rees Morrison’s Morsels #112 – additions to earlier posts and short takes
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The Laffey Matrix for outside counsel costs
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Contrast normative and positive descriptions of the managerial actions general counsel take
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Push your law firms to budget matters by means of a narrowing fee funnel
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How to add another monitor for your workspace, and why
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A “legal heat map” to identify offshorable legal services
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To compare different metrics, use the technique of stating them as standard deviations
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Who are you? Please answer the one-question poll on the right side – early results
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Two-way evaluations of individual performance – internal of external and the reverse
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Global managing attorney, a big step from a non-lawyer director of operations
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Productivity bang for the buck with a large monitor
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Consider whether the key partners at your major firms sit on Boards of other companies
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A 1910 reference to a corporate legal department from a vast collection of old newspapers
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Does your compliance and ethics program do this – a one-minute self test?
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Data showing that the larger the legal department the larger the firms it retains
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The debate over whether strong ties should decrease or increase rate adjustments
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Rees Morrison’s Morsels #111 – additions to earlier posts and short takes
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An assemblage of process improvement techniques
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Ten Best Posts of June 2009 from Law Department Management Blog
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Lawyer intelligence, judged by law school rank, might alter legal department management
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A “blook review” (a blogger book review) – nine blog posts give a feel for a book
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Thank goodness only a small percentage of partners are rainmakers
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“The professionalization of law firms in the UK started in the early 1990s”, and spread in-house
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Reporting lines, locations of lawyers, and broader geographic responsibilities
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On this blog, the Million Word March – a whole lotta writin’ goin’ on
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Thank you, contributing (guest) authors on this blog! Are others interested in writing?
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Cluster analysis, a statistical tool that could benefit legal department managers
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Be fair, because, more than you, outside lawyers relive the hurdles they have jumped for you
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A set of this blogger’s basic values and beliefs
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The idea of quantifying shifts in responsibilities of general counsel, based on HR departments
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Aspects of very large law departments
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From the HR world, a metric of legal spending per capita, but it has little usefulness
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Commercial arbitration can be shockingly costly and the fees are difficult to negotiate
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Introduction to organizational capital and legal departments
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Some differentiators between spend management systems
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Girdle-the-globe transactions as the counterpart of bet-the-company litigation – blue moon events
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A good senior-manager move: insist on an agenda before agreeing to attend a meeting
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New general counsel have about five days before assessments of them form and harden
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Rees Morrison’s Morsels #110 – additions to earlier posts and short takes
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Part XXXVI of a collection of embedded metaposts
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Another data-byte about spending on law firms in the United States
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Two fixed-fee offerings: due diligence for M&A and insurance administrative hearings
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Two fixed-fee offerings: due diligence for M&A and insurance administrative hearings
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Six Sigma projects in various legal departments
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IBM blurs the line between inside and outside counsel with its “virtual firm” of retirees
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Some insights into who visits this blog
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Online networks may be able to share information securely with a legal department’s network
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Big Blue’s big legal department: centralized, span of control, and matrix
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How to encourage your quiet lawyers to express their ideas in groups
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Good managers laugh – here’s a cartoon applicable to this blog
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“When you go to battle, you hire the army not the soldier” – not an apt metaphor for firm vs. partner
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Compliance groups in legal departments and decentralized through the company
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Spend time with economics, a saving grace for managers, and bank on the pay off! Any interest?
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Always trying to improve this blog …. and envisioning it five years from now
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Five distortions that afflict groups: group think, false consensus, chill, and passive-aggressive, and dominance
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Professional development must be the personal responsibility of each in-house attorney
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The burden of administrative time demands on in-house counsel
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A patent benchmark – percentage of applications filed by internal lawyers
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Committees in legal departments, how they differ from project teams, etc.
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Comments based on the Hartford’s litigation group
:
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Pros and cons of legal teams, where members work from different locations
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Eleven reasons why a law department might transfer a pending matter to a different firm
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Two secondment tips: build them into competitive bids and scale them to fees paid
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Newsletters produced by in-house legal groups
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Fourth set of 13 blogs that have referred visitors to Law Department Management Blog
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Hyperpost – ten collected metaposts – on legal department benchmarks
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E-billing survey suggests not too many bills per vendor
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Definitions of legal department management terms – eleven more and an offer of a free download that presents nearly 100
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Rees Morrison’s Morsels #109 – additions to earlier posts and short takes
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Please describe (confidentially) the best example you have encountered of good leadership by an in-house lawyer
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Don’t even consider termination premiums with your law firms
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Should you expect your firms to bring you results from their competitive intelligence (CI) programs?
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Unexpected number of law firms and vendors per user of leading e-billing systems
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If you send your RFP to fewer firms, each is likely to try harder and respond better
:
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More information about and applications of Information Theory
:
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Host an innovation tournament in your legal department to identify and reward good ideas
:
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The frequent flyer way to unify a global legal department
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Who knows how much US law departments spend per year on US law firms?
:
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General counsel who travel frequently, especially those of global companies, need stamina
:
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SharePoint application for knowledge distribution at Hilton, a global legal department
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Soft skills that benefit in-house counsel
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A three-ply description of the structure and roles of global legal department
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Misguided elevation of creative solutions over effective solutions
:
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“Business and communication styles” of firms they like matter for in-side lawyers
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A hyperpost on law firm marketing efforts
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Data on number of invoices processed per user through leading e-billing systems
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Categorized benchmarks discussed on Law Department Management Blog
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Descriptive metrics – the series so far – and thoughts on the ill-fated effort to develop that idea
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Meet more posts on how to improve meetings
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Number of invoices processed through leading e-billing systems
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A surprising boost from technology thought by firms to enhance client service
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A new website that curates the flood of law firm updates on substantive legal developments
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Six disadvantages of a decentralized system where local business leaders hire lawyers as they see fit
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A claim about billions in value overseen by patent attorneys, but questions, always questions
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More data and observations about why legal departments choose a specific firm for a matter
:
Updated:
Better meetings through devotion to facts based on reading during the meeting
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The A3 technique of Toyota to boost the thinking of problem-solvers
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The false consensus effect and the blinders it creates for teams of peers
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Wince at the suggestion that firms press for quarterly meetings with the general counsel
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Tell law firms where they rank on metrics that matter to you, without identifying the firms
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If you invest in formal education for your lawyers, insist on repayment if they leave soon thereafter
:
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Bring foreign-country lawyers to headquarters for a stint of training
:
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Part XXXV of a collection of embedded metaposts
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Law departments extensively profiled on this blog: Cisco, DuPont, FMC, GE, McDonalds, Microsoft, United Technologies and Wal-Mart
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Ten most interesting posts on this blog of May 2009
:
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Plotlines, a presentation technique more advanced than timelines
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Mens sana in corpore sano: corporate lawyers and health
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Third set of resources from blogs and websites – thanks to another 13
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Ten benchmarks many general counsel wish they could obtain and ponder
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Another set of 12 practice pros and cons
:
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Don’t ask for a single budget, ask for scenarios of plausible outcomes in a matter and the associated fee estimates
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Ten most fundamental metrics for general counsel and interested observers
:
Updated:
Recommendations of software for litigation tracking that are new to me
:
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Hyperpost on software applications for legal departments
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Pros and cons of an in-house lawyer responsible for relations with a primary law firm
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Be decisive, general counsel!
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Don’t print this blog post about saving money and the environment when printing!
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Posts on General Electric’s legal function
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Rees Morrison’s Morsels #108 – additions to earlier posts and short takes
:
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Brood over these benefits of coffee
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Improve after-action programs by linking lessons learned to matter management
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Estimates of 60 percent spent on litigation by US legal departments may be too high
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Eight differences between “cost” and “value”
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The four-part legal “Value Chain” put forward by Global Leaders in Law
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Global Leaders in Law report on value in legal services – clients set value
:
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Connecting the dotted lines: lawyers who report to someone on a secondary basis
:
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An article about how to loosen the grip of Incumbent law firms
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MSI Global Alliance, a law firm network, and an Argentinian legal department that uses them
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Shared and free database of law firm diversity data
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Seven suggestions for sourcing and procurement to get legal on-board
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Three reasons not usually given for dropping firms from a preferred list, especially confidentiality breach
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Modest value ascribed to “chemistry” between firm lawyer and department lawyer
:
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Pros and cons of hiring lawyers to reduce fees paid to outside counsel
:
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Strange data from law firms regarding drops in “demand” for legal services in late 2008
:
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Let’s have a training game based on how to reduce the costs of a legal department
:
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Questions about statement that law departments in Europe are steadily handing more work inside
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Why the FMC Litigation Value Challenge might not have attracted more major participants
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A set of professional shortcomings in law departments
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Additional requirements imposed before inside counsel can hire outside counsel
:
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Rees Morrison’s Morsels #108 – additions to earlier posts and short takes
:
Updated:
A blog on litigation hold notices, and some of my recent posts on them
:
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Patchwork-quilt management ideas for general counsel allow no blanket generalizations
:
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A compendium of 30 posts about management initiatives by Microsoft’s law and government affairs department
:
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In-house or inhouse, or which end of the egg do you break?
:
Updated:
Free Metaposts Pluses (MP2), which you can request by sending me an email
:
Updated:
According to survey, six greatest challenges to making better use of productivity metrics
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Updated:
Productivity and, ironically, what enhances it: sleep and caffeine
:
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A calculation of value added by a law department
:
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Three comments on survey data about “metrics favored by managers”
:
Updated:
Four applications for tracking and managing matters, in one law department
:
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Two domestic firms for every foreign firm retained?
:
Updated:
Survey reports three unexpected management strategies in response to the current economic challenges
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Spending on litigation might not rise during the economic downturn
:
Updated:
Concept toolboxes, bundles of instruments that make a broad concept actionable
:
Updated:
Law department software that helps manage fees paid – not necessarily lagging usage
:
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Data analytics for departments of law — sensitivity analysis compared to multivariate regression
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Five key sourcing tactics to help the legal department lower external legal costs
:
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Perplexities that surround the term “foreign law firm” and some data
:
Updated:
Data over time on the number of Fortune 250 companies with legal departments of 60+ attorneys
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How much do general counsel push their law firms to open offices, form practice groups, merge, etc.?
:
Updated:
A neglected but high priority to nurture and support your high-potential staff
:
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Six minus two observations about Six Sigma and law departments
:
Updated:
Monte Carlo Simulations well explained, and the ability to do a sensitivity analysis
:
Updated:
Discounts that rise with volume suggest holdback percentages might also increase
:
Updated:
13 more blogs or sites that have directed visitors to LawDepartmentManagementBlog
:
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Some history about efforts by legal departments to encourage use of diversity lawyers in firms
:
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For patent services, the bigger the firm the higher the hourly rate
:
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Does any company limit a lawyer leaving to a firm that got lots of work from the department?
:
Updated:
What if a law department gave each attorney an allowance to pay for support?
:
Updated:
Rees Morrison’s Morsels #107 – additions to earlier posts and short takes
:
Updated:
The Hogan Personality Inventory, and speculation on its applicability to in-house attorneys
:
Updated:
The money illusion and the culprit: your ventromedial prefrontal cortex
:
Updated:
This skeptical blogger, the null hypothesis, and proof of management effectiveness
:
Updated:
The future: Automate billing and generate detailed information when law firms telephone you
:
Updated:
Law firms that experiment on clients, a move much worse than cross-selling
:
Updated:
Pros and cons of technology support within the legal department
:
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Within corporations, misguided attitudes by lawyers that “lawyers are different”
:
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Older, wiser, and after 4,500 posts, time to rethink my 12 substantive categories
:
Updated:
Mixed findings on whether diverse work groups function more effectively
:
Updated:
Part XXXIV of a collection of embedded metaposts
:
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How much fee detail should law firms be asked to divulge if they work on a fixed fee?
:
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The interplay between Legal and Finance
:
Updated:
General counsel resoundingly feel they should be considered the chief ethics officer
:
Updated:
Blog information legal departments have available from the AmLaw 200
:
Updated:
A dramatic case study of how blog posts can reach law firms, immediately and broadly
:
Updated:
When lawyers are in the minority in a law and compliance department
:
Updated:
Profound and provocative offshore move announced today by Rio Tinto’s legal department
:
Updated:
Operational and financial risks outrank legal risks, re general counsel and directors
:
Updated:
Some data estimates about the size of the Indian LPO market [by guest author Robert Unterberger, Esq.]
:
Updated:
240 general counsel rank the best national firms for corporate law: size matters
:
Updated:
Another silver-tongued platitude, but how in the world do you implement it?
:
Updated:
Decision analysis and estimating litigation costs: Paper Chace
:
Updated:
14 blog sites that complement and compliment this one
:
Updated:
Comments from a profile on a general counsel advising on public policy and running a major business unit
:
Updated:
“Win-win” is a “lose-lose”platitude for assessing deals with law firms about firms
:
Updated:
Is it the right of a Board of Directors to evaluate and replace a general counsel?
:
Updated:
Hits on this blog from Twitter are a steady stream
:
Updated:
The sibling, information technology (IT), and its interactions with law
:
Updated:
If offshoring raises fears of security breaches, consider US commonwealths and territories [by guest author Robert Unterberger, Esq.]
:
Updated:
Poisson distributions, such as to model client demands and responsiveness
:
Updated:
Work breakdown structure (WBS), a tool of project management for legal departments
:
Updated:
One out of five seventh-year US lawyers work in-house, and most are very satisfied with career
:
Updated:
Queuing theory and what it might say about how quickly law departments turn around work
:
Updated:
Who is responsible for compliance? [By guest author Jeff Kaplan]
:
Updated:
Rees Morrison’s Morsels #106 – additions to earlier posts and short takes
:
Updated:
A definition and short discussion of “incumbent firms”
:
Updated:
A daring idea regarding a periodic alternative to hourly billing – department decides payment periodically
:
Updated:
References on this blog to Human Resources (HR) departments
:
Updated:
Corporate Legal Exchange run by the Corporate Executive Board
:
Updated:
Resurrection of online auctions for legal services?
:
Updated:
In-house salary overview for Japan
:
Updated:
Has Samsung elevated the role of Asian general counsel?
:
Updated:
Eleven reasons why in-house lawyers value online legal professional networks
:
Updated:
More collective actions by law departments
:
Updated:
Bias against consultants, but what are partners in law firms except specialized consultants?
:
Updated:
If fixed-fee deals were more public, general counsel could put a value on their departments
:
Updated:
Ovations for the “Three Tenors” of current law-department stardom
:
Updated:
An inquiry into data about participation of lawyers on online social networks
:
Updated:
National Grid’s use of SharePoint and other legal software
:
Updated:
Sonnets from the Portuguese, or, more prosaically, about this blog and blogster in Portuguese
:
Updated:
Further thoughts on shared evaluations of law firms
:
Updated:
The abundant management initiatives of Jeff Carr, general counsel of FMC Technologies
:
Updated:
August DuPont, as in proud DuPont, for its management initiatives
:
Updated:
The ten posts on this blog that have attracted the most views from feeds – hard to figure
:
Updated:
Part XXXIII of a collection of embedded metaposts
:
Updated:
Three useful comments regarding translation services
:
Updated:
Delay, the deepest frustration of benchmark projects
:
Updated:
Budgets of chief legal offices and currency fluctuations
:
Updated:
A patent portal and list of 20 patent search tools
:
Updated:
Is the incidence of internal audits of legal departments rising?
:
Updated:
Esteem your teams with temerity as they teem with tremendous challenges (four of them)
:
Updated:
Two questions about secondments – familiarity and conflicts
:
Updated:
Rees Morrison’s Morsels #105 – additions to earlier posts and short takes
:
Updated:
Legal departments and “expense audits”
:
Updated:
Four essential concerns of project managers
:
Updated:
Outhouse GCs and a blog for companies that have not yet hired an in-house lawyer
:
Updated:
Three points beyond the overview post on SharePoint
:
Updated:
Nice remarks about me by other bloggers (aka, this blogger has no shame)
:
Updated:
Online networks for in-house lawyers get most of their management comments from non-practitioners
:
Updated:
“Goodbye, accrual world” – sorry, but US legal departments have to report incurred but unpaid legal fees
:
Updated:
Information collected by registered agents could go directly to your matter management system
:
Updated:
Microsoft SharePoint as an option for legal departments
:
Updated:
Law firms “need to grasp that they sell ideas, not time”
:
Updated:
Reverse brainstorming stimulates creativity
:
Updated:
Does a general counsel make all that much difference?
:
Updated:
UTC references and its global spread plus governance software
:
Updated:
Two more ways to increase energy efficiency in a legal department, and startling facts
:
Updated:
A tip of the hat to Serengeti for its contributions to management information
:
Updated:
Bill reductions need to be legitimate for a general counsel to claim savings
:
Updated:
“Direct reports”: those whose primary evaluator is the general counsel
:
Updated:
Try a double blind evaluation of law firm proposals
:
Updated:
Four ways to look at concentration regarding a department’s use of law firms
:
Updated:
To manage a legal department is to wrestle with “wicked problems”
:
Updated:
Auctions: pick the best bidder but for one dollar more than the second best bid
:
Updated:
The h-index and a potential application to legal departments’ retention of law firms
:
Updated:
“Don’t benchmark competitors” (?)
:
Updated:
Twelve problems with broad, commercial benchmark surveys of law department metrics
:
Updated:
Challenges faced by moderators of panels
:
Updated:
Term sheets for clients should be a key part of contracting processes
:
Updated:
The claimed value to general counsel of predictable legal expenses on matters
:
Updated:
Firms call them beauty contests, law department managers call them interviews
:
Updated:
A framework for models of law department operations
:
Updated:
Some reasons why legal groups have to adhere to corporate IT standards – from long ago
:
Updated:
13 ground rules for moderators of effective panels at retreats
:
Updated:
Cross-pollination with two specialized blogs – procurement/sourcing and legal technology
:
Updated:
Part XXXII of a collection of embedded metaposts
:
Updated:
A striking recommendation regarding who interviews attorneys for a position in the department
:
Updated:
A possible benchmark metric: total lawyer hours worked per billion of revenue
:
Updated:
To boost knowledge transfer, ask lawyers to tell stories, and give cash to the good ones
:
Updated:
Rees Morrison’s Morsels #104 – additions to earlier posts and short takes
:
Updated:
Wolfram|Alpha, a harbringer for benchmarks, computes answers to questions from databases
:
Updated:
Conditional fee arrangements in England
:
Updated:
Nestlé has reduced legal spend to 0.12% of net proceeds of sale, and other steps
:
Updated:
More about litigation investment and financing
:
Updated:
Law and compliance overlap and need role clarification according to 2005 EY study
:
Updated:
Compare the cost of internal and external lawyers on the basis of equivalent experience
:
Updated:
Courtesy of Doug Cornelius, 15 more compliance-related blogs
:
Updated:
A suggested revision to the estimate that in-house attorneys work 1,850 chargeable hours a year
:
Updated:
A department with a plethora of diversity and a remarkable leanness
:
Updated:
16 blogs on compliance, corporate social responsibility, or corporate governance
:
Updated:
Selectively require e-billed invoices if cost and effort outweigh benefit
:
Updated:
Audit trails as a feature of matter management systems
:
Updated:
Estimates of non-chargeable time of in-house lawyers: 5-10 percent?
:
Updated:
A ranking of cost cutting methods, crude but worth a mention
:
Updated:
Ask your law firms to introduce their clients who can improve your company’s business
:
Updated:
A 2005 study of corporate regulatory compliance practices, including reporting lines
:
Updated:
A client can choose to pay by the hour or pay one of several fixed fees
:
Updated:
Survey highlights gap between law departments and their firms on offshoring
:
Updated:
Descriptive metrics and dashboards
:
Updated:
Descriptive metrics for legal department workloads
:
Updated:
Some figures I wish we knew about incoming and outgoing general counsel
:
Updated:
The need for a consensual model to assess the “maturity” of law department management practices
:
Updated:
A clear explanation of a chief compliance officer’s mandate
:
Updated:
Rees Morrison’s Morsels #101 – additions to earlier posts and short takes
:
Updated:
A collection of posts preserved, reviewed and produced on litigation support
:
Updated:
If you handle electronic discovery in your legal team, you might need a small library of software
:
Updated:
The law of diminishing returns interpreted in the context of legal departments
:
Updated:
Consider taking part in an unusual un-RFP for law firms interested in representing FMC Technologies
:
Updated:
A major program of the 3M legal department to train leaders and business-savvy lawyers
:
Updated:
US patent litigation racks up more than just legal fees
:
Updated:
Eleven committees, Toastmasters and board training for in-house staff of Exelon’s law department
:
Updated:
The lay of the land: seven “maps” for managers of corporate legal departments
:
Updated:
A historian’s skills applied to legal department management
:
Updated:
No benefit from contingency arrangement if your company has the cash to pay the firm
:
Updated:
A way to bring evaluations of lawyers into line with each other
:
Updated:
How Ford Motor Credit laid off lawyers provides some lessons for others
:
Updated:
A strengthened performance management system at H-P
:
Updated:
Specialist lawyers see their legal domain in everything; the sniglet “experteyes”
:
Updated:
Audits of the legal condition in a country
:
Updated:
When the journalist calls, mix and match buzz words to embellish your legal department
:
Updated:
Search not just your department’s knowledge base but also your key law
:
Updated:
Neck and neck in terms of law department users among the leading e-billing systems
:
Updated:
An idea for a retreat that builds knowledge of how clients see the world
:
Updated:
Four structural changes resonant with the importance of in-house business acumen
:
Updated:
Part XXXI of a collection of embedded metaposts
:
Updated:
Respect your clients – don’t patronize them – and expect the same from your law firm partners
:
Updated:
Repeat after me: “Know how your business and industry operates, in detail!”
:
Updated:
The useful information you gain about your lawsuit if you negotiate an alternative fee arrangement
:
Updated:
Four observations regarding management of outside counsel costs
:
Updated:
What is the difference between a department’s “budget” and its “forecasts”?
:
Updated:
The accumulation of spend data in legal departments will, over time, reduce costs
:
Updated:
Does the monthly rate of expenditures on cases rise faster the longer the case lasts?
:
Updated:
Another application caught in the web of 2.0: online prediction markets for law departments
:
Updated:
When the meter is ticking, inside counsel don’t speak to their outside counsel as readily
:
Updated:
Rees Morrison’s Morsels #100 – a centennial of additions to earlier posts and short takes
:
Updated:
“Four basic conditions are necessary before employees will change their behavior”
:
Updated:
The long and winding road: an in-house lawyer’s career path
:
Updated:
A long-term relationship between client and law firm – more than 100 years
:
Updated:
The $5 million threshold, “at which level general counsel start wanting software to assist”
:
Updated:
Some titles at the top in the UK vary greatly from US titles
:
Updated:
Legal departments (or corporations) accounted for about seven percent of recent Patent Bar registrants
:
Updated:
Whether law department lawyers compete with outside lawyers
:
Updated:
Hourly billing rates of law firms and some ramifications
:
Updated:
A radical proposal – divert bill-review time to firm-direction time
:
Updated:
My article: three major benefits for departments that use offshore talent and three major concerns
:
Updated:
Not what you hear: high satisfaction with their firms’ ability to understand clients’ business needs
:
Updated:
A kindling of posts on the fees of law firms and their “burn rate”
:
Updated:
“They Haven’t Blown Me Away” (Bruce Heintz)
:
Updated:
“We Can Normally Get an Answer from Other Firms with Just One Phone Call” (Bruce Heintz)
:
Updated:
Data on billing rates of partners, and an extrapolated guestimate for 2009
:
Updated:
Most disfavored by law firms, yet most-favored nation agreements are sought by law departments
:
Updated:
Hopeful, but the ACC Covenant with Counsel is not all that game-changing
:
Updated:
For comparable lawyers, fluctuations of billing rates across different cities?
:
Updated:
Swine flu pandemic and law departments
:
Updated:
Which influences most in the selection process, the firm or the lawyer?
:
Updated:
Whither the role of Boards in general counsel selection, pay and evaluation
:
Updated:
A merger followed by a decimation of the acquired company’s law department
:
Updated:
Do general counsel care if law firms are Six Sigma belted, ISO registered or PMI credentialed?
:
Updated:
Project management discipline useful inside law departments
:
Updated:
True, useful, and generalizeable – but not all three at once when we comment on legal department management
:
Updated:
Maps galore in the patent world
:
Updated:
Pick a firm to help you dig into your data mining efforts
:
Updated:
TWOG – merger of Twitter and blog
:
Updated:
How to flourish with a brainstorming session: eleven suggestions
:
Updated:
If guidelines become tomes, gathering dust …
:
Updated:
Exegesis on the Covenant with Counsel (Part III)
:
Updated:
Part XXX of a collection of embedded metaposts
:
Updated:
Video conferencing, beyond cost control to other benefits
:
Updated:
Ten suggestions for break-out groups at a large meeting or retreat
:
Updated:
Digressions on the new general counsel of Schneider Electric
:
Updated:
Management concerns of general counsel that apply much less to other staff units
:
Updated:
Asymmetric commitments in ACC’s Value Challenge’s Covenant with Counsel
:
Updated:
Reciprocal commitments in the ACC Value Challenge’s Covenant with Counsel
:
Updated:
Operationally, no distinction between policies, procedures, processes, and practices
:
Updated:
Successful lawyers and the self-serving attribution bias
:
Updated:
A nine-box grid used to evaluate in-house counsel
:
Updated:
“What’s in it for me?” and the uphill fight to get unidirectional information reporting
:
Updated:
Rees Morrison’s Morsels #99 – additions to earlier posts and short takes
:
Updated:
Median total pay of S&P 500 CEO compared to median cash pay of general counsel
:
Updated:
Is it true that in-house lawyers dislike change more than their clients dislike change?
:
Updated:
Cisco’s guidelines, 70 pages of them, for patent preparation and prosecution
:
Updated:
The consolations of philosophy
:
Updated:
Update on my poll regarding percentages reduced after review of invoices from law firms
:
Updated:
The study of the mind – psychology – and the mental state of in-house lawyers
:
Updated:
LSAT scores as potential drivers of performance and metrics
:
Updated:
“Some People Here Perceive the Partner as Wily”
:
Updated:
Zero-based staffing decisions by general counsel
:
Updated:
Legal-department management memology – Part III, concepts
:
Updated:
“The Partner Is Too Doctrinaire”
:
Updated:
Rees Morrison’s Morsels #98 – additions to earlier posts and short takes
:
Updated:
As the economy shrinks, so do paychecks of in-house counsel, if they are still employed
:
Updated:
Productivity metrics on dictation compared to typing
:
Updated:
Strategies for the transfer of knowledge by in-house attorneys who retire
:
Updated:
Google Trends and what (little) my first look reveals about law department management
:
Updated:
Fill-in-a-gap lawyers for legal departments
:
Updated:
One-half the billing rates for partners in major, non-rim US cities (aka regional firms)
:
Updated:
Status report on embedded metaposts on this blog
:
Updated:
“Making the legal department’s functions more transparent by quantifying what the lawyers do and reporting it”
:
Updated:
Lawyers in merged law departments (Bank of America and Merrill Lynch) must reapply for jobs
:
Updated:
Very low number of law firms instructed by the FTSE 100
:
Updated:
EMC’s law department: rapid growth, metrics, and GC’s responsibilities
:
Updated:
Legal-department management memology – Part II (96 words defined on this blog)
:
Updated:
Confusing data on the number of law firms typically retained by law departments
:
Updated:
A tool to assess and encourage diversity in sexual orientation among law firms
:
Updated:
Hendiadys, rhetorical trope of the day for law department management
:
Updated:
In-house managers of firms should focus on cost, not “relationship”; three issues
:
Updated:
Thoughts about favoring non-incumbents in RFP procedures
:
Updated:
Maybe law departments should abandon formal evaluations of law firms
:
Updated:
Part XXIX of a collection of embedded metaposts
:
Updated:
Quantify every RFP response question, even if it is only ranking them against each other
:
Updated:
What do you mean, your law department doesn’t retain a public relations firm?
:
Updated:
Three reasons why legal departments are better positioned to negotiate arrangements with suppliers
:
Updated:
The upcoming singularity — when in-house costs equal outside billing rates
:
Updated:
Assign cases to categories and manage the categories differently
:
Updated:
A six-item form to evaluate law firm performance (FMC Technologies)
:
Updated:
For an RFP process, streamline agreement to your contract by attaching a form to the second round
:
Updated:
If you charge back outside counsel fees to clients, do clients then meddle with your management?
:
Updated:
Some training of lawyers who later join companies does not play well inside
:
Updated:
Modest choice of the most innovative in-house use of technology
:
Updated:
CAGR of e-billing implementation and some thoughts on interpretation of the data
:
Updated:
Keep multiple approvals of law firm invoices to a minimum
:
Updated:
Three comments on special fee arrangements touted by a law firm’s brochure
:
Updated:
Sixty percent of every HCA lawyer’s bonus is tied to reductions of legal fees
:
Updated:
Assertion that some law departments prepare “strategy documents” regarding outside counsel usage
:
Updated:
Stability over three years of number of matters involving law firms in the US and number of US firms
:
Updated:
Oddly small gap between US and worldwide total legal spending per lawyer
:
Updated:
Distribution of spending on outside counsel by 10 areas of law
:
Updated:
Four cost-cutting measures from two law departments
:
Updated:
Unbundle – use specialists firms for tasks outside counsel have traditionally done
:
Updated:
Litigation financed by hedge funds – the risks it poses to in-house budgets
:
Updated:
In-house IP lawyers might bring in revenue through the secondary patent market
:
Updated:
First of all, say economists, let’s outsource all the lawyers!
:
Updated:
Billing rates understandably increase as lawyer’s specialization increases
:
Updated:
A fixed-fee arrangement, for environmental litigation, and some of advantages and worries
:
Updated:
Collected thoughts on law firms and the quality of their work
:
Updated:
A fixed fee to handle 450 labor, employment and ERISA cases over five years
:
Updated:
Rees Morrison’s Morsels #98 – additions to earlier posts or brief comments
:
Updated:
A study and software that estimate the costs of e-discovery
:
Updated:
Responsibility for contract management and the size of contract portfolios
:
Updated:
Wide differences between law departments in the percentage of contracts they review
:
Updated:
Before important changes in your department, steer to a pilot program
:
Updated:
Internal collaboration on some projects can be bad for your law department
:
Updated:
A tell-all exposè of this blogger, including a meandering career and bold vision for this blog
:
Updated:
Cost per internal lawyer hour and the ratio of support staff
:
Updated:
Productivity, quality, and risk (PQR) – the three horsemen of every general counsel
:
Updated:
Codes of Business Conduct and what in-house counsel can accept as gifts or business entertainment
:
Updated:
We need a common definition for “regional law firms” as compared to “rim biggies”
:
Updated:
Brainwriting 6-3-5 as an alternative to established brainstorming
:
Updated:
Notes on the “Twenty most influential general counsel in America”
:
Updated:
How to train clients so that the company benefits the most – 18 more choices
:
Updated:
Service tickets as a way to gather feedback from members of the law department
:
Updated:
Conduct a “role-sizing” to match responsibilities to titles and compensation levels
:
Updated:
In-house fox guarding the firm henhouse – unrealistic to expect invoices to be slashed
:
Updated:
Part XXVIII of a collection of embedded metaposts
:
Updated:
Six search methods to retrieve documents from knowledge bases
:
Updated:
Disadvantages of picking a core team at a law firm to work on matters
:
Updated:
Parameters for a fixed-fee retainer paid to a law firm for occasional short calls
:
Updated:
Higher discounts for lower-value work?
:
Updated:
Some of the intellectually deepest ideas from this blog (res mensan)
:
Updated:
Most important concepts for general counsel as managers: the next ten
:
Updated:
“What have we stopped doing this quarter that we did last quarter?”
:
Updated:
Sometimes in-house lawyers need to back away from the table
:
Updated:
HSBC Japan’s general counsel on secondment, strap line, GCs new to company and panels
:
Updated:
A psychometric instrument to assess cognitive styles of adaptation and innovation
:
Updated:
Rees Morrison’s Morsels #9 – additions to earlier posts or brief comments
:
Updated:
For a general counsel, four pros and four cons of cross selling by law firms
:
Updated:
Clients undeservedly blame lawyers when deals crater
:
Updated:
Pros and cons of specifying the format in a Request for Proposal
:
Updated:
My first anniversary as an independent consultant to law departments – join me as I blow out the candle!
:
Updated:
Benchmark reports should calculate weighted averages, correctly
:
Updated:
Adjusted for inflation, median damages in patent litigation have held steady for 12 years
:
Updated:
A gating process before a lawyer can assign work to a law firm
:
Updated:
Workshops with key firms to improve how they and your department can work better together [
:
Updated:
A post mortem technique that asks for one suggestion from a client for how to improve
:
Updated:
RFP processes apply much more broadly than just to commodity legal services
:
Updated:
Rees Morrison’s Morsels #96 – additions to earlier posts
:
Updated:
Your law firms will try to dissuade you from an RFP process that threatens them
:
Updated:
A prevalent view from law firms: “RFP’s are A Necessary Evil’
:
Updated:
Six of the most common inadequacies of general counsel as people managers
:
Updated:
Managerially inept general counsel and other managers: nine additional posts
:
Updated:
Social networking for in-house lawyers – a series of posts on various blogs
:
Updated:
In-house lawyers and use of “client” compared to “business partner” (and “customer”)
:
Updated:
A homegrown Access database for information management
:
Updated:
Law departments do not want the law firms they rely on to run at a loss
:
Updated:
Four techniques from one company regarding management of intellectual property
:
Updated:
An administrative task, not a legal task: annual certifications of directors
:
Updated:
Five steps toward more reality in internal budgets
:
Updated:
Some basic steps with priority setting to become more efficient
:
Updated:
An ideascape for legal department managers – Beware the Ideas of March! (Part I)
:
Updated:
Total of US corporate legal spend in 2008: $96 billion
:
Updated:
A breakdown of outside counsel usage by practice area
:
Updated:
Pattern recognition and emotional tagging: two ways the brain can trip up
:
Updated:
Cons dominate pros when companies consider awarding inventors a residual share of income
:
Updated:
Nine myths held by some in-house lawyers about their management of law firms
:
Updated:
Growth of the patent secondary market complicates life for in-house patent counsel
:
Updated:
Will we see legal departments turn to offshore decision analysis?
:
Updated:
Will associate layoffs reduce the use of offshore legal service providers?
:
Updated:
The heart of client darkness: how hard it is to map client use of the law department
:
Updated:
Over the past 20 years, ten breakthrough developments in law department management
:
Updated:
Issues of concern for Asian and Middle Eastern departments when they deal with external counsel
:
Updated:
Sociometers as a tool to assess interaction among lawyers and therefore productivity
:
Updated:
Four methods at McDonald’s to integrate its global legal department
:
Updated:
Survey data on how Asian and Middle Eastern departments rate attributes when they choose law firms
:
Updated:
A grid analysis can help you decide among various alternatives
:
Updated:
A claim that for capability, the best law departments have dedicated IT staff, and an odd additional claim
:
Updated:
The term “local counsel” has multiple domestic meanings for law department managers
:
Updated:
The general counsel of McDonald’s is a member of the board of directors of Aon Corporation
:
Updated:
Ten plausible consequences of axing in-house lawyers
:
Updated:
Cost-effective compliance (Part V) – staffing issues
:
Updated:
Survey data on five ways that Asian and Middle Eastern law departments recruit lawyers
:
Updated:
The Stepladder Technique to help everyone in a group come to grips with a problem
:
Updated:
An out-of-left-field comment about the priorities general counsel should set for software
:
Updated:
Examples that show why management practices all have strengths and weaknesses
:
Updated:
When forced to reduce staff, seven changes a law department needs from its clients
:
Updated:
Does its litigation spend or volume indicate anything about margins of a company?
:
Updated:
How we can think about and define the notion of a “primary law firm”
:
Updated:
An embedded metapost on eleven more how-to’s
:
Updated:
Seven reasons why I question the infatuation with “best practices”
:
Updated:
Six advantages of discounts off standard rates compared to other cost-saving efforts
:
Updated:
Rees Morrison’s Morsels #95 – additions to earlier posts
:
Updated:
A blunt message to law firms that minimizes research costs
:
Updated:
Analysis of four broad topics on this blog that subsume multiple metaposts
:
Updated:
Performance metrics from a matter management system presume effective policies and disciplined procedures
:
Updated:
Refuse to pay travel-related costs if a distant firm wants to compete with good local firms
:
Updated:
Business units should assign a designated contract coordinator for the contracts process
:
Updated:
Low monthly spending limits, without prior authorization, keep a tight leash on outside counsel
:
Updated:
Part XXVII of a collection of embedded metaposts
:
Updated:
Interns from a nearby law school can supplement your staff inexpensively
:
Updated:
Postmortems are to die for, according to one tip for saving money in-house
:
Updated:
Fake objectivity in rigged competitive bids – an unfounded complaint by disappointed firms
:
Updated:
A case study of offshore assistance to a law department regarding contract review
:
Updated:
Some data about costs, win rates and topics of Requests for Proposals – and my questions
:
Updated:
Samuel Johnson and a tension between reporting on management and recommending
:
Updated:
After an RFP process, ask law firms confidentially to critique the process
:
Updated:
Do law firms make you feel insecure when they appear before clients, or do they make you look good?
:
Updated:
Seven more cognitive traps in-house lawyers may fall into
:
Updated:
Four more green technology suggestions
:
Updated:
Law departments can subscribe to an online database of memoranda by Allen & Overy
:
Updated:
Cost effective compliance (continued by Jeff Kaplan)
:
Updated:
Fixed-fee for client satisfaction surveys and analysis, by Rees Morrison – Part 4 of 4
:
Updated:
Rees Morrison’s Morsels #94 – additions to earlier posts
:
Updated:
Ten tips to make conference calls more effective
:
Updated:
A teasing statement of dramatic savings in litigation
:
Updated:
Compare benchmarks of legal departments across industries by standard deviations
:
Updated:
To bring work in doesn’t necessarily mean to add lawyers or workload
:
Updated:
Pedantic or precise: to discriminate between related management terms
:
Updated:
The more hardball you play, the better you hit the experience curve
:
Updated:
Four more simple steps to help the environment
:
Updated:
Benchmark and talent information from the US Postal Service’s Law Department
:
Updated:
General counsel aren’t fired for late processing of invoices
:
Updated:
People in law departments alter behavior (game the system) to hit goals
:
Updated:
Between leading companies in the same industry, wide ranges on lawyers per billion
:
Updated:
Correlate attributes of management initiatives to cost and productivity benchmarks
:
Updated:
A method to describe management initiatives on double axes
:
Updated:
Another clue toward the number of lawyers practicing in-house in the United States
:
Updated:
An article and seven more posts on fully-loaded costs per hour
:
Updated:
Unusual facts about Michael Critelli, once Pitney Bowes’ general counsel and later its CEO
:
Updated:
Comparative metrics and observations about this blog
:
Updated:
Larger law departments always can find some money to spend if they need to
:
Updated:
Two descriptive metrics on counsel retained: fee concentration with firm size and effective rate
:
Updated:
Cost-effective compliance risk assessment (continued by Jeff Kaplan)
:
Updated:
A source of data on fees and total legal costs – public records of a city
:
Updated:
Part XXVI of a collection of embedded metaposts
:
Updated:
Descriptive metrics part I: in-house lawyers of a law department
:
Updated:
Without spend management software, law departments get their data from accounts payable
:
Updated:
Larger law departments may get a leg up from network externalities
:
Updated:
Attrition in law departments and consequences of it
:
Updated:
Bill write-offs criticize the in-house lawyer who took them or the firm that suffers them
:
Updated:
Fixed-fee for Rees Morrison at law department retreats – Part 3 of 4
:
Updated:
Rees Morrison’s Morsels #93 – additions to earlier posts
:
Updated:
“Periodic written matter updates” as a very common demand by law departments?
:
Updated:
By some measures, diversity could be easier to achieve in a global law department
:
Updated:
First official blog poll results – a barbell result on bill write-offs
:
Updated:
Profit margins correlate to lawyers per billion (and revenue per lawyer)
:
Updated:
How they speak about some points of law department management in Britain
:
Updated:
Beyond a Service Level Agreement (SLA) to a Legal Exposure Plan
:
Updated:
A blook (blog book) on how to get more from your law department talent
:
Updated:
De jure “standard hourly rates” but de facto “discount crazy quilt”
:
Updated:
Why do law departments use their e-billing system with only a bit more than half their firms?
:
Updated:
Odd request of outside counsel to cut bills according to the completeness of matters
:
Updated:
A greeting and explanation in German of this blog and my consulting
:
Updated:
Work and study hard at the time of day when you feel freshest
:
Updated:
Percentage of external legal spend paid governments on IP costs
:
Updated:
Law departments and Research & Development
:
Updated:
Benchmarks on specialists headquarters and commercial lawyers in international regions
:
Updated:
Wide differences from recent survey between industries in lawyers per billion Euros
:
Updated:
EMEA benchmarking data and four comparisons to US benchmark numbers
:
Updated:
A post in French about this blog and this blogster
:
Updated:
Cost-effective compliance risk assessment [by guest author Jeff Kaplan, Esq.]
:
Updated:
Eleven ideas for how to unify a global law department
:
Updated:
A post for Spanish-speaking in-house lawyers
:
Updated:
Feed readers and aggregators for this blog and other blogs on law department operations
:
Updated:
Cartograms to depict data about law departments
:
Updated:
The high, hidden costs of layoffs and one bad way to do them
:
Updated:
A potpourri of management points in a recent article about a UK law department
:
Updated:
General counsel make a difference in corporate governance, specifically insider trading
:
Updated:
Fixed-fee, unlimited calls with Rees Morrison on law department management – Part 2 of 4
:
Updated:
Podcast by this blogger on offshoring, competitive bids and secondments
:
Updated:
Collective action by law departments to loosen conflicts rules
:
Updated:
A full law department after pouring together InBev and Anheuser-Busch
:
Updated:
Introduction to “descriptive metrics” that quantify key characteristics of a law department
:
Updated:
No snark about how law departments
:
Updated:
Please try my first poll on Law Department Management Blog
:
Updated:
Supplemental comments about decision-tree software by a partner who uses it
:
Updated:
Fixed fee for a law department’s benchmarking project! – Part 1 of 4
:
Updated:
Square foot costs divided into occupancy costs calculate an in-house lawyer’s office footprint
:
Updated:
Attrition rates at law departments range upwards from seven percent
:
Updated:
Too bad that academics rarely pay attention to law departments
:
Updated:
Rees Morrison’s Morsels #93 – additions to earlier posts
:
Updated:
An essential benchmark metric: lawyers per billion of revenue
:
Updated:
Law departments and capitalized (depreciated) patent costs
:
Updated:
Pulling together several ideas about how law departments can come up with new approaches
:
Updated:
Primacy of intangibles for why some industries have more lawyers per billion of revenue
:
Updated:
Power law distributions in the sphere of law department management
:
Updated:
More power to power-law distributions
:
Updated:
Law librarians in law departments of corporations (an AALL Special Interest Section)
:
Updated:
“… have a large number of lawyers,” Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google
:
Updated:
Ten ways how to stimulate and disseminate improved ways of working
:
Updated:
BHAGS (big, hairy audacious goals) for law departments as a way to goose achievement
:
Updated:
Three comments about a conference for UAE in-house counsel
:
Updated:
Opposing views of law departments and law firms on litigation
:
Updated:
36 contract management systems for law departments, courtesy of David Munn
:
Updated:
David Munn’s reference materials on contract management systems for law departments
:
Updated:
Three trends regarding the costs of ineffective compliance [by guest blogger Jeff Kaplan
:
Updated:
Global Legal Professional certification for offshore LPO staff
:
Updated:
Getting to the root of decision-tree analysis: a clear explanation
:
Updated:
Ugly effects of a narcissistic general counsel
:
Updated:
Ten clues to the onset of complacency by your primary law firms
:
Updated:
General counsel learn more about management from “action verbs” than from “achievement verbs”
:
Updated:
“I Love Them” [by guest blogger Bruce Heintz]
:
Updated:
Taking time off to consider vacations by in-house counsel
:
Updated:
Four years of creating LawDepartmentManagementBlog.com
:
Updated:
Something new: online questions submitted to me and a podcast interview to answer them
:
Updated:
“Assess the Skills of My People, How They Measure Up and What I’ll Need in the Future”
:
Updated:
Part XXV of a collection of embedded metaposts
:
Updated:
Ambivalency of general counsel toward cross-selling by partners
:
Updated:
Codes of Conduct and the conduct of legal departments
:
Updated:
A wonderful method for collective learning by the leadership group of a law department
:
Updated:
Which metric is better: revenue per lawyer or lawyers per billion of revenue?
:
Updated:
Ruminations on a descriptive metric for supervisory responsibility of law department attorneys
:
Updated:
A large and global intellectual property function at Philips
:
Updated:
Another example of insurance against litigation and legal costs, this time for patents
:
Updated:
Seven reasons why law departments do not take dramatic action against costs
:
Updated:
“Some of the Partners’ Infighting Was Apparent to Us”
:
Updated:
A large IP department demonstrates the breadth of the specialty practice
:
Updated:
A hundred-year old patent department
:
Updated:
Ten suggestions for how to hear from everyone in a group
:
Updated:
Blanket waivers sought by law firms
:
Updated:
The law departments of law firms
:
Updated:
Should general counsel insist that their outside law firms use legal-offshore personnel?
:
Updated:
Low-cost recruiting by State Farm’s Law Department through Google Adwords
:
Updated:
Law departments should be able to claim savings if accounts payable spends less on checks
:
Updated:
“The Firm Should Market Me More” [Bruce Heintz, Outside Looking In]
:
Updated:
Speculation on the FBI’s high number of lawyers per billion of budget
:
Updated:
Debut of guest author, Bruce Heintz, as Outside Looking In
:
Updated:
Software to manage Board material is not yet widely used by law departments
:
Updated:
Circulate posts from this blog to your colleagues with permalinks
:
Updated:
The tough lot of the law department for a spin-off
:
Updated:
Three specialized software packages: entity management, ethics compliance and IP management
:
Updated:
Perplexing data on users of e-billing software
:
Updated:
Matter management systems are only as good as their reporting capabilities
:
Updated:
Rabid-dog quotes, which provoked me to disagree strongly
:
Updated:
“The critical legal issue facing business today is reducing business risk.”
:
Updated:
Data for small departments on the mix between salaries, bonuses and incentive compensation
:
Updated:
“State-of-the-art technology” as another hackneyed term
:
Updated:
Some specifics about an RFP process for single lawsuits
:
Updated:
“Demand Management” at Royal Bank of Canada’s legal department
:
Updated:
Obstacles to change – concentration required and errors while learning
:
Updated:
“World-class” should mean improvement year over year, instead of an end state
:
Updated:
An update on the unicorn of law department management, best practices
:
Updated:
Do a few basics well and creatively, rather than seizing on the next great idea
:
Updated:
Rees Morrison’s Morsels #92 – additions to earlier posts
:
Updated:
Metrics on document management systems used by large law departments
:
Updated:
Wide range of technology roles in law departments according to a recent survey
:
Updated:
For aligned law departments, structure follows when the business changes its configuration
:
Updated:
Does your technology put at risk your attorney-client privilege?
:
Updated:
Purging 80 percent of your law firms and permitting the survivors only alternative billing
:
Updated:
Document comparison tools (red-lining) used by large law departments
:
Updated:
Acquiring companies do not always keep their general counsel; TLS per lawyer
:
Updated:
Are these wide swings in specialists’ cash compensation plausible?
:
Updated:
Median total cash compensation varies by legal specialty
:
Updated:
38 articles by Rees Morrison about law department management
:
Updated:
Non-infringement opinions of patent counsel, but non-data on cost and frequency
:
Updated:
For an associate, a C-suite secondment at Samsung Electronics
:
Updated:
Modest penetration of offshoring now and in future among UK legal departments
:
Updated:
Four ideas for how to tell law firms to best respond to your RFP
:
Updated:
The big-three law department metrics hold in a survey of small law departments
:
Updated:
Ten upsides of the recession for law departments
:
Updated:
If you can’t roll-back billing rates, at least freeze them
:
Updated:
Fame and fortune! money-makers based on law departments
:
Updated:
4,000 posts on LawDepartmentManagementBlog! Isn’t it time you say hi?
:
Updated:
Are law departments urging unjustified settlements because e-discovery is too costly?
:
Updated:
Cogito ergo counsel – a celebration of in-house cerebration
:
Updated:
Metrics on what proportion of discovery covers electronic files on computers
:
Updated:
Legal work sent offshore in early 2008, smallest of six functions, might be 2% of companies now?
:
Updated:
Standard & Poor’s somehow to incorporate legal risk assessments into its ratings
:
Updated:
Software that helps most with cost and quality of legal holds
:
Updated:
Association of Corporate Counsel (ACC) blog roll of 15 topic blogs, including this one
:
Updated:
A huge amount of data about US patent lawsuits available for free online
:
Updated:
Lock all laptops in your law department!
:
Updated:
Best practices for litigation holds
:
Updated:
Online tool to grade your law department and company on legal data custody practices and costs
:
Updated:
Legal expenses vary enormously according to “practice maturity” on legal holds
:
Updated:
Five questions no Request for Proposal should ask
:
Updated:
Dramatic data on what is saved in legal expenses by good compliance practices
:
Updated:
Another YouTube smash hit by this blogger (PG rated)
:
Updated:
Metrics on programs that reward inventors with cash and other benefits
:
Updated:
A compilation of suggestions for how to make better use of email
:
Updated:
Celebration of the first anniversary of embedded metaposts, all 240 of them!
:
Updated:
The recession’s downsides for law departments
:
Updated:
Cognitive quirks impair our ability to reach correct conclusions – filters and interpretation
:
Updated:
The ergonomics of innovation, especially affordances, as applied to law departments
:
Updated:
Eight matter management systems that exhibited at LegalTech NY
:
Updated:
Rees Morrison’s Morsels #91 – additions to earlier posts
:
Updated:
PDF of my presentation at LegalTech NY on sites that tell you about your blog traffic
:
Updated:
Eight blogs on how lawyers can write more clearly
:
Updated:
The term “early case assessment” has a specialized meaning for litigation support
:
Updated:
Seven dictation software companies at LegalTech NY 2009
:
Updated:
On YouTube, Rees Morrison holding forth on Law Department Management , the blawg!
:
Updated:
Project teams in law departments – Part II – examples of teams
:
Updated:
Project teams in law departments – Part I with definitions of the term’s scope
:
Updated:
The ten most important management concepts for general counsel
:
Updated:
Algorithmic pricing as a new way for law firms to offer (sort of) fixed fees
:
Updated:
Terminology of total legal spending and total legal costs
:
Updated:
Thirteen books cited on this blog in 2008
:
Updated:
Nine applications of Web 2.0 for law departments
:
Updated:
Split surveys that can ask lots of questions but in a manageable format
:
Updated:
Eight benefits from a virtual data-room for large-scale due diligence
:
Updated:
Part XXIV of a collection of embedded metaposts
:
Updated:
Lawyers are what they remember, so here are three tips for how to improve your memory
:
Updated:
Indemnification of general counsel for personal legal fees
:
Updated:
Six reflections on the high-level RIF at Merrill Lynch’s legal department
:
Updated:
Some observations from the merger of Bank of New York and Mellon’s law departments
:
Updated:
Rental cost in the US for a law department’s space – about $25 a square foot
:
Updated:
Turf wars after efforts by a general counsel to usurp too much responsibility
:
Updated:
Scope of responsibility of a law department does not extend to all “processes, systems, protocols, structures, operations and controls”
:
Updated:
Distinguish between rate increases, fee increases, and outside counsel spend increases
:
Updated:
14 “law department” blogs from Justia and data about their rank and currency
:
Updated:
Four more blogs that cover topics aimed at in-house attorneys
:
Updated:
Groups are good to share information but not so good to make decisions
:
Updated:
The availabity and self-confident biases afflict law department decision-makers
:
Updated:
Some of the many sites from which readers reach this blog
:
Updated:
Law department management is flat – good practices transcend country borders
:
Updated:
The bottleneck general counsel is bad for the department and for law firms
:
Updated:
A law department promulgates policies on when its lawyers should be involved in decisions
:
Updated:
Decisions made in law departments and a method to study their effectiveness
:
Updated:
Lawyers, too, probably favor talking to someone rather than searching a database
:
Updated:
Attributized Bayesian analysis (!) and the selection of law firms
:
Updated:
“In many cases, management has no idea how law departments spend money”
:
Updated:
Four thoughts on cost-saving techniques implemented en masse
:
Updated:
A qualitative difference, perhaps, between an inside hour and an outside hour
:
Updated:
Rees Morrison’s Morsels #91 – additions to earlier posts
:
Updated:
14 US patent applications that managers of legal departments might want to know about
:
Updated:
Plethora of patents that pertain to legal department management
:
Updated:
Another patent for legal strategic planning and streamlined processes
:
Updated:
Four ways to reduce the budget Gap – plans, smaller firms, contract lawyers and offshoring
:
Updated:
Another issue with outside counsel guidelines: copyright on works made for hire
:
Updated:
The top ranking of “keeping apprised” suggests law department frailties
:
Updated:
Goal at Ernst & Young’s law department to respond to all calls or messages within two hours
:
Updated:
In 2005, what did law firms and law departments use offshore resources to accomplish?
:
Updated:
A contracts expert disagrees with the notion that free, online contracts will amount to much
:
Updated:
Six Sigma and pro bono at Caterpillar
:
Updated:
Cannibalization and its discontents – consultants and lawyers give away knowledge on the Net
:
Updated:
In-house attorneys can be as objective as outside counsel
:
Updated:
A law department that wants law firms to submit fees and expenses promptly
:
Updated:
A detailed annual operating plan and quarterly rolling updates
:
Updated:
Law departments want law firms to use technology that saves clients money
:
Updated:
“We hate surprises,” say general counsel, and law firms should take heed
:
Updated:
Integration of a Code of Conduct with outside counsel guidelines, in two ways
:
Updated:
An online source of service providers, with many of them useful for legal departments
:
Updated:
Online, free legal forms that might help some in-house counsel
:
Updated:
A customized joint checklist of value indicators developed with your key law firms
:
Updated:
More research on what a general counsel can learn about a law firm on LinkedIn
:
Updated:
Once again, are recoveries through litigation to the credit of the legal department?
:
Updated:
Data on four reasons why law departments can’t hire even though they would like to hire
:
Updated:
Damages, settlements, and fines (legal resolution costs) in relation to inside and outside costs
:
Updated:
If you are the general counsel, don’t let partners “speak regularly with key clients”
:
Updated:
Does Black-Scholes give a value for restricted stock awards?
:
Updated:
Several reasons why the “N” of a survey (number of respondents to a question) is important
:
Updated:
Some in-house lawyers manage people who are not on the law department’s headcount
:
Updated:
Business intelligence software in 2005 that figures out fixed-fee amounts?
:
Updated:
Law firms and lawyers on LinkedIn – learn more about firms you have hired or might hire
:
Updated:
Conflicting data on how often compliance reports to the general counsel
:
Updated:
Higher base pay for general counsel as they manage more attorneys
:
Updated:
Lawsuits are not relevant in terms of 25 percent drops in share price
:
Updated:
Fifteen blogs that post mostly on legal process outsourcing
:
Updated:
“Corporate Governance” identified as a very common non-legal function of general counsel
:
Updated:
Two common distortions among many decision traps
:
Updated:
Rees Morrison’s Morsels #90 – additions to earlier posts
:
Updated:
Six software packages, free or low cost to help you tackle your deluge of emails
:
Updated:
A view that fewer opportunities exist for pro bono services in-house than in law firms
:
Updated:
Do in-house counsel shoot from the hip on legal advice more than outside lawyers?
:
Updated:
Thirty to fifty percent chance of losing your job after a merger
:
Updated:
Survey data on the frequency of outsourcing various types of law-related services
:
Updated:
Consider whether to outfit your legal staff with dual monitors to increase their productivity
:
Updated:
Substantial percentages of in-house lawyers located away from corporate headquarters
:
Updated:
Hourly cost gap between inside and outside counsel might be about one-third
:
Updated:
More attacks on the median cost per hour of inside attorneys (~$200)
:
Updated:
Software that has enhanced this blog and my blook on outside counsel
:
Updated:
Box-and-whisker plots to compactly display much data
:
Updated:
Many lawyers in dispersed offices rely on support staff from the business unit
:
Updated:
Definitions of terms used by managers of law departments – Part V
:
Updated:
No appreciable increase in overhead when law departments spawn international offices
:
Updated:
Performance metrics differ from benchmark metrics
:
Updated:
Part XXIII of a collection of embedded metaposts
:
Updated:
Median benchmarks for comparables stay quite stable over periods of five or more years
:
Updated:
A definition of reporting, and some further reflections
:
Updated:
In-house official reporting lines are not ambiguous, but whom to keep happy may be
:
Updated:
Rees Morrison’s Morsels #89 – additions to earlier posts
:
Updated:
Praise for Ms. VBA (Laura Miller) and her contributions to this blogs
:
Updated:
Commendable practices regarding staff lawyers in overseas offices
:
Updated:
Whether it’s good strategically to retain plaintiff’s firms when you sue other companies
:
Updated:
Solid suggestions to help make decisions in teams
:
Updated:
Good practice to find and engage lawyers who are not actively seeking a job, aka passive job seekers
:
Updated:
Six key reasons to hire your own lawyer for an overseas office, plus two more
:
Updated:
Law department uses an online tool to diagnose team effectiveness
:
Updated:
“Fight to win every lawsuit against your company that lacks merit”
:
Updated:
Law departments: a close-knit family or a leave-me-alone workplace
:
Updated:
Fixed-fee arrangements for specified kinds of lawsuits against LyondellBasell
:
Updated:
Do law departments second-guess litigation counsel who try a case?
:
Updated:
An assertion that settlements are often split among units so none feel accountable
:
Updated:
In-house counsel don’t job hop in the UK, so their salaries stagnate!?
:
Updated:
Clustify software analyzes posts on this blog and finds related ones
:
Updated:
A five-year business plan by a law department is a waste of time
:
Updated:
Location of in-house counsel will eventually match the global footprint of a company
:
Updated:
My first BLOOK – blog book – on outside counsel management!
:
Updated:
Retainer agreements to let your lawyers call a firm whenever they want
:
Updated:
Dramatic US and UK compensation differentials for the top in-house lawyer
:
Updated:
Seek budgets even for general advice, not just individual matters
:
Updated:
Top three reasons executive coaches are engaged
:
Updated:
XING and its law department members and group
:
Updated:
Five behaviors highly correlated with failure among newly-promoted lawyers
:
Updated:
Legal metrics haven’t been correlated to indicators of corporate financial performance
:
Updated:
Mind mapping to help recognize and pursue priorities, and generally organize thoughts
:
Updated:
Entrepreneurial litigation financing, a nightmare of more big and better-funded lawsuits
:
Updated:
Two online forums for law department management (Legal OnRamp and LinkedIn)
:
Updated:
Spearman’s g, the general intelligence of in-house lawyers, and high g’s are healthier
:
Updated:
Oblique discounts by law firms – a rebuttal to a misreading of my post
:
Updated:
Knowledge management should privilege tacit knowledge and not stick to an IT perspective
:
Updated:
The cost advantage of offshoring to lower-cost countries is shrinking
:
Updated:
General counsel may inadvertently discourage bad news and overlook their chilling effect
:
Updated:
Four ways a group or team can make decisions
:
Updated:
Big general practice firms for patent litigation, IP specialists for patent prosecution
:
Updated:
Electronic brainstorming with decision-support software
:
Updated:
Café conversations as a productive activity at retreats
:
Updated:
Thematic pairs that sum up the deepest tensions of law department management
:
Updated:
Multiple cost centers in law departments
:
Updated:
Advantages and disadvantages of internal zero-based budgeting
:
Updated:
Thoughts on the title “Head of Dispute Resolution and Risk Management”
:
Updated:
The two hardest questions for general counsel to measure and answer: productivity and value
:
Updated:
Grass roots knowledge management, not the forest and below even the trees
:
Updated:
Trends that general counsel spot and some risks associated with bandwagons
:
Updated:
Four dangers of leadership competency models
:
Updated:
Law departments might see rates hold but discounts offered in other ways by firms
:
Updated:
Hyperpost on billing by law firms – eight collected metaposts with URLs and two articles
:
Updated:
An oblique data point: 20 percent of US lawyers work in law departments
:
Updated:
Rees Morrison’s Morsels #88 – additions to earlier posts
:
Updated:
Bankruptcy fees predicted from a regression analysis, and scale effects
:
Updated:
My latest article – five hot buttons in outside counsel guidelines
:
Updated:
A method to describe and quantify forward and backward references on this blog
:
Updated:
Insouciant rate increases for 2009 projected by managing partners
:
Updated:
Before your law department licenses software, ten questions to ask the vendor
:
Updated:
Problems with brainstorming as a creativity tool
:
Updated:
Profile of a large offshore legal-service provider based in India
:
Updated:
Can in-house counsel select offshore legal-service providers without approval of a partner?
:
Updated:
Part XXII of a collection of embedded metaposts
:
Updated:
Rees Morrison’s Morsels #87 – additions to earlier posts
:
Updated:
If “small” is a law department of 1-5 lawyers, what is a “medium” department?
:
Updated:
Billable hour requirements at firms ought to raise hackles on in-house counsels’ necks
:
Updated:
Not a small point to have a consensus definition for a “small” law departments
:
Updated:
Full-page ad by Chevron’s Law Function honors one of its lawyers for contributions outside the department
:
Updated:
Disappointment over the benefits hoped for from convergence
:
Updated:
The “burden of knowledge” on lawyers as the law accumulates and complicates
:
Updated:
Bill auditors who pore over invoices for compliance and saving
:
Updated:
Timekeepers everywhere, and some concerns about that fact by general counsel
:
Updated:
An analysis of the gatekeeping independence of inside and outside counsel
:
Updated:
It can mislead to simply ask a group of law departments what cost-saving techniques they use
:
Updated:
Homage to to the humble, ubiquitous fax machine! Ecce Fax Romana
:
Updated:
Rees Morrison’s Morsels #86 – additions to earlier posts
:
Updated:
Documenting the frequency of document management software in law departments
:
Updated:
Quizzical on quantitative quiddities – odd data on litigation spend by billion dollar companies
:
Updated:
Update on posts about discounts from law firms
:
Updated:
Almost half of all administrators do not have a separate budget for operations
:
Updated:
Poach, promote or persuade: sources of law department administrators
:
Updated:
Litigation exposure differences, perhaps, between public and private companies
:
Updated:
Many US companies with less than $100 million in revenue have an in-house lawyer
:
Updated:
Needed: normalized lawsuits per billion dollars of revenue
:
Updated:
Most important attributes for managers of law department operations
:
Updated:
My troll sense of humor: a patent by a law department for outside counsel management
:
Updated:
Knowledge of facts – what is – does not tell you what to change – what ought to be
:
Updated:
In 2001, General Electric applied to patent a web-based Legal Management System
:
Updated:
Outside counsel spend as a percentage of revenue has increased steadily over 25 years
:
Updated:
A nominal trend downward over 25 years in lawyers per billion of revenue
:
Updated:
Each lawyer responsible for outside counsel try a quarterly cost-saving effort and report the results
:
Updated:
At the end of a competition, presentations by the finalist law firms
:
Updated:
Most law-department administrators report to the general counsel
:
Updated:
Change management is a loosy-goosy term
:
Updated:
Should law departments produce accrual figures monthly?
:
Updated:
Competitive bids projected to penetrate only slightly during coming five years
:
Updated:
Uniform Task-Based Management System – no thanks [metapost UTBMS 8]
:
Updated:
One firm proposes, another disposes – a clever budget technique?
:
Updated:
By 2013, 20% or more of the legal advice firms currently charge for will be free on the Web
:
Updated:
Mashups of matter management systems and complementary databases
:
Updated:
More on bonuses for firms and their discontents
:
Updated:
Pros and cons of litigation oversight by non-litigators
:
Updated:
In-house managers of lawyers should take into account people hate asking for help
:
Updated:
Grant a right of first refusal on lucrative work if the firm takes on other work at a fixed amount
:
Updated:
For ambitious lawyers of the future, beyond neuropharmacology gleams gene doping
:
Updated:
Ziggurats or Hershey Kisses? The distribution of work in law departments by sophistication
:
Updated:
When you negotiate a fixed-fee deal with a firm, have an Executive Board partner sign it
:
Updated:
On the refusal to pay for first and second year associates
:
Updated:
Are law departments deliberately slowing down payments to law firms?
:
Updated:
Eyes rolling at $200 an hour charged for a paralegal, but blind to practicality
:
Updated:
Rees Morrison’s Morsels #85 – additions to earlier posts
:
Updated:
Roughly half of cases that go to trial settle during the trial
:
Updated:
Pro bono services by law departments as distinguished from community service activities
:
Updated:
By 2013, the total number of outside law firms our department uses will?
:
Updated:
Techniques that would be helpful in most mediations
:
Updated:
Thirteen “Corporate Law Department Blogs” on Justia’s BlawgSearch
:
Updated:
Part XXI of a collection of embedded metaposts
:
Updated:
E-billing posts proliferate on this blog
:
Updated:
Data on hiring few new firms and firing even fewer incumbent firms
:
Updated:
Technology your law department needs to enable telecommuting
:
Updated:
Benefits of choosing a firm to handle a trial, even if that firm didn’t handle the litigation
:
Updated:
XML tags on documents in a contract management system
:
Updated:
Associates on tracks that have different expectations for them as to billable hours
:
Updated:
Generational diversity in law departments
:
Updated:
Bring your key firms together at a conference to build momentum for change
:
Updated:
Unheralded drawbacks from reliance on very large law firms
:
Updated:
An odd comment on why law departments insist on hourly billing
:
Updated:
Dedicate a person to push an initiative and have more confidence that something will happen
:
Updated:
Committees in law departments for management initiatives
:
Updated:
Secondments to headquarters as a way to integrate foreign-based lawyers
:
Updated:
Self-sufficient in-house counsel who do not have support staff
:
Updated:
“Contract-services law firms” as a resource (and new term) for managers of law departments
:
Updated:
Contract lawyers who do litigation review work – high markups and low productivity
:
Updated:
The world of law department management is also flat
:
Updated:
Disbanded headquarters group of lawyers and dispersal to business units
:
Updated:
25 percent reduction in legal department after Akzo Nobel acquired International Chemicals
:
Updated:
Three responsibility foci: Single Point of Contact, specialists and majors/minors
:
Updated:
Benefits of document assembly in the words of a general counsel
:
Updated:
Articulate reasons and rank as a better way to evaluate RFP proposals
:
Updated:
Dogs, furry ones, in law departments
:
Updated:
Generalist lawyers in-house deserve better than to be tarred as “average”
:
Updated:
Two spots that blemish SPOCs (single points of contact)
:
Updated:
Rees Morrison’s Morsels #84 – additions to earlier posts
:
Updated:
Every lawyerin a law department , even without reports, is a manager in at least five ways
:
Updated:
Some data on legal holds
:
Updated:
Observations on another department’s budget categories
:
Updated:
Metrics that would be good if they were available
:
Updated:
Contributions by law departments to causes supported by the general counsel
:
Updated:
Rate increases by law firms – a contentious topic
:
Updated:
Evaluations of law firms on diversity as good, adequate, or poor
:
Updated:
“People are more likely to respond [to a survey] when they are disgruntled”
:
Updated:
Darwin’s Dictum – “all observations must be for or against some view if they are to be of any service”
:
Updated:
Two views of evolution in the management practices of legal departments
:
Updated:
Let’s try a “fuzzy factor” rating of management practices in law departments
:
Updated:
Seven guidelines for when the legal department ought to be involved in contracts
:
Updated:
International group to foster leadership skills among senior law-department lawyers
:
Updated:
What four key benefits does a contract management system provide?
:
Updated:
Commentary on intranets of law departments
:
Updated:
Encryption of data by law departments
:
Updated:
Rees Morrison’s Morsels #84 – additions to earlier posts
:
Updated:
Difference between “general compliance” and “regulatory compliance”
:
Updated:
Jekyll counselors but should we Hyde litigators?
:
Updated:
At the end of a competitive bid, keep more than one service provider on the line
:
Updated:
Blawgs listed on the ABA site related to law department management
:
Updated:
Offshoring should mean not just cheaper costs but also improved processes and handoffs
:
Updated:
RFP processes can get out of control
:
Updated:
A prediction that HQ legal groups will shrink
:
Updated:
Balanced scorecards for law departments available from AKS-Labs
:
Updated:
Management acronyms that should be on your GTKL (got to know list)
:
Updated:
Assembled posts on the Legal Electronic Data Exchange Standard (LEDES)
:
Updated:
Short cut for an RFP process – direct talks with a qualified firm or two
:
Updated:
Interim-jurists in the Netherlands as a resource for legal departments
:
Updated:
Five continua on which to place every law department
:
Updated:
Botany and its lessons for law department management – morphology and classification
:
Updated:
A RACI chart on roles for information technology contracts
:
Updated:
Lawyers can drop pounds at work through thermogenesis
:
Updated:
Set deadlines for law firms to respond to RFPs according to their needs for time?
:
Updated:
A different view: let competing firms do what they want to find out information for their bid
:
Updated:
How difficult it is to prove how hard your lawyers are working
:
Updated:
Contract management software for law departments
:
Updated:
Six Sigma analysis of a contracting process
:
Updated:
Contract negotiation guides as distinct from contract templates
:
Updated:
The debate on whether to track and charge-back time to clients
:
Updated:
Internal (or infernal) tracking of time
:
Updated:
Two rationale for what should report to the general counsel – “control functions” and independence
:
Updated:
If a firm takes on a chunk of work, consider having some inside staff move to the firm
:
Updated:
A concordance analysis of of the first 3,700 headers on LawDepartmentManagementblog
:
Updated:
Irrational assumptions based on perceptions of worth, regardless of factual support
:
Updated:
180 degree views on 360 degree evaluations
:
Updated:
Nine tips for dealing with change
:
Updated:
“Most CEOs have never hired a general counsel.”
:
Updated:
Performance in relation to budget should determine whether one of a panel of firms gets more work
:
Updated:
Converge if you don’t increase your average firm size and you get volume discounts
:
Updated:
Deconstruction of a definition of value-based payments to law firms
:
Updated:
Seven team building activities for retreats
:
Updated:
Law department activities as priorities, programs, projects and practices – Part IV, practices
:
Updated:
Law department activities as priorities, programs, projects and practices – Part III, projects
:
Updated:
Law department activities as priorities, programs, projects and practices – Part II, programs
:
Updated:
Law department activities as priorities, programs, projects and practices – Part I
:
Updated:
In-house lawyers view legal fees like insured employees view medical costs – third party coverage
:
Updated:
Two notes from a study of Fortune 1000 women general counsel
:
Updated:
Law Department Management Blog dreams beyond search algorithms
:
Updated:
Thank goodness benchmark metrics are not as capricious as governance ratings!
:
Updated:
Even more about back references on this blog and the evolving framework
:
Updated:
Mandala visions and their graphical representation
:
Updated:
In the legal industry, neither buyers nor sellers are fungible, except at the 30,000 foot level
:
Updated:
Procrastination as the pile on the desk rises higher and higher
:
Updated:
Risk aversion quantified: the gain needs to be twice the amount a risk of being lost
:
Updated:
Thoughts on references by general counsel on partners and vendors
:
Updated:
Four recent conferences – and a call for papers, so to speak
:
Updated:
Rees Morrison’s Morsels #83 – additions to earlier posts
:
Updated:
Some data on back references on this blog during nine months of 2008 – exciting, yes?
:
Updated:
Staffing options to consider before you establish your first lawyer overseas
:
Updated:
Five questions to ask regarding whether to staff your first international lawyer
:
Updated:
Contra Heineman, do some CEOs mistrust high-powered law departments?
:
Updated:
Articles published during 2008 by Rees Morrison, your bloggerly host
:
Updated:
Three points from UBS: reports to former GC, an interim trio, and “partners” yet no longer reporting to clients
:
Updated:
Your primary goal when political views clash in a law department is to elect silence
:
Updated:
Surprisingly low data on law-firm chargeable hours and effective billed rates
:
Updated:
Legal competencies compared to operational implementation
:
Updated:
Thank you to the blogs that have referred readers to LawDepartmentManagementblog.com
:
Updated:
Part XX of a collection of embedded metaposts
:
Updated:
Double monitors for lawyers as a two-edged sword
:
Updated:
Three more energy-saving suggestions that all legal departments could adopt
:
Updated:
More management scrutiny of legal costs when those fees must be expensed starting in 2009
:
Updated:
Useful acronym for meetings – PACER
:
Updated:
Neural nets and the logic to estimate the costs of related matters
:
Updated:
Blogs that have referred readers to LawDepartmentManagementblog.com
:
Updated:
Steps that help people act on a good idea
:
Updated:
Bias in support of our conclusions, and a mental exercise to test that bias
:
Updated:
Offerings by law firms beyond legal capabilities
:
Updated:
Early history about the management practice, regional counsel
:
Updated:
An analogy between corporate finance and legal talent
:
Updated:
Six Sigma and a project for entity oversight
:
Updated:
Six years out of the law department, then promoted to General Counsel
:
Updated:
Cost-benefit analysis sheds light on the difficulty of ROI calculations
:
Updated:
Normal and reasonable fees don’t deserve excellent services
:
Updated:
From surveys, attributes considered by law departments when selecting firms
:
Updated:
Don’t try to divine the future, but do prepare your department to cope with the unexpected
:
Updated:
In-house lawyers responsible for a specialty in addition to their primary area of expertise
:
Updated:
The elements of a knowledge management program
:
Updated:
A dozen arguments in favor of convergence
:
Updated:
Evaluations and assessments of law firms by publishers and others
:
Updated:
Neuroscience finds we experience more pleasure when we consume expensive firms?
:
Updated:
A high standard for lining up replacements for vice presidents in a law department
:
Updated:
An unjustified complaint about law departments hiring law firm associates
:
Updated:
Ten sound suggestions for how to listen more effectively
:
Updated:
A rationale for high fees paid for matter-influencing partners
:
Updated:
Cross-training to learn, improve productivity, and create flexibility in a law department
:
Updated:
A dozen arguments against convergence
:
Updated:
The costs to a law department of turnover
:
Updated:
Some findings about online professional networks for in-house counsel
:
Updated:
Deliberately delaying payments on law firm invoices and automatic payments?
:
Updated:
Rees Morrison’s Morsels #82 – additions to earlier posts
:
Updated:
A list that ranks law firms by capability and the methodology behind it
:
Updated:
Modest steps available to all law departments to improve the environment
:
Updated:
Litigation management Part IV – costs of litigation generally
:
Updated:
Deeper knowledge of the law and its possible effect on risk aversion
:
Updated:
Use software to describe and understand your company’s “patent landscape”
:
Updated:
Law departments and their role in anti-counterfeiting activities
:
Updated:
Three on-the-ground tips for better post-mortems
:
Updated:
Rebuttal to bashing RFPs for rehearsed shows and swapped-out talent
:
Updated:
A role you do not want your relationship partner to assume: hub of the wheel
:
Updated:
Assistance from internal IT team for some e-discovery tasks
:
Updated:
Patent litigation metrics and management techniques, but not costs
:
Updated:
What exactly is corporate governance and how does it differ from the corporate secretary role?
:
Updated:
Law departments as sponsors of conferences
:
Updated:
Send in-house patent lawyers to sit periodically with researchers
:
Updated:
Power and control in a law department
:
Updated:
Activities to help you set priorities for how to spend your time
:
Updated:
After a competition, give constructive feedback to the firms not selected
:
Updated:
An overview of employee motivation from four perspectives
:
Updated:
Multiple bundles of work and the advantages of firms bidding on more than one
:
Updated:
Ten reasons to refuse to indulge in competitive bids to select law firms
:
Updated:
Nine reasons to ask firms to compete for your assignments
:
Updated:
Rees Morrison’s Morsels #81 – additions to earlier posts
:
Updated:
Three strategic objectives for an intellectual property group
:
Updated:
Ethics in a company and the supporting role of the legal department
:
Updated:
Ethical awareness at Lockheed Martin
:
Updated:
Associations and affiliation groups for women in-house counsel
:
Updated:
The global legal department challenge: a shared sense of being one law department
:
Updated:
Part XIX of a collection of embedded metaposts
:
Updated:
Can project managers co-exist with litigation managers?
:
Updated:
Litigation management Part III — intellectual property litigation costs
:
Updated:
Litigation management Part II – 9 more techniques assembled
:
Updated:
Litigation management Part I – topics already collected on this blog
:
Updated:
Speed dating to meet providers of services to law departments??
:
Updated:
General counsel as the voice and face of a company in some situations
:
Updated:
Twitter, general counsel and law departments
:
Updated:
Competition in law departments
:
Updated:
My webinar this Tuesday on RFPs: questions, boilerplate, guidelines, and benchmarks
:
Updated:
Enlightenment values for enlightened general counsel
:
Updated:
Nine insights a general counsel might share if invited to speak at a law firm’s partner retreat
:
Updated:
Lawyers feel more comfortable with words than with images
:
Updated:
When you send an RFP, lay out clearly the format in which you want the responses
:
Updated:
The twelve-week RFP calendar
:
Updated:
A gathering of key law firms in a summit to explore cost cutting
:
Updated:
Do you need a signed confidentiality agreement before you send a firm an RFP?
:
Updated:
Role of law departments regarding D&O questionnaires for members of the Board of Directors
:
Updated:
Cisco — the law department most-written about on this blog
:
Updated:
Posts about this blog qua blog
:
Updated:
MetLife’s summary of legal accomplishments by its Legal Affairs group
:
Updated:
Ice-breakers at offsites
:
Updated:
Cottage industries that provide patent support
:
Updated:
Several management initiatives by LexisNexis Group to increase patenting effectiveness
:
Updated:
Cottage industries for law departments, as seen in trade show sponsors
:
Updated:
Blogs and social networks as free sources of information useful to law-departments
:
Updated:
Four points about law firms from an Economist column
:
Updated:
Postmodernist views on law-department management knowledge
:
Updated:
Rees Morrison’s Morsels #80 – additions to earlier posts
:
Updated:
Top seven obstacles to good management of talent
:
Updated:
Observations on largest categories of sponsors of the ACC Annual Meeting
:
Updated:
Mapping law-department management concepts
:
Updated:
Let’s think some more about lawyers and intelligence
:
Updated:
What if in-house lawyers of size and savvy could hire non-lawyers to render legal advice?
:
Updated:
Size of law firms used as it relates to size of client company, and its law department
:
Updated:
Economic concepts of use to law department managers
:
Updated:
Moral hazard and a measure of insurance security top-flight law firms provide
:
Updated:
The “economics of information” as applied to law departments
:
Updated:
“Opportunity cost” as a concept from economics for law departments
:
Updated:
Have hourly rates risen in line with legal risks and complexity?
:
Updated:
Different lenses for peering at law department operations: more on blog categories
:
Updated:
Control by general counsel over newly-created corporate entities
:
Updated:
A global and decentralized law department at Bombardier
:
Updated:
Global departments often have small outposts and lower percentages of lawyers at “headquarters”
:
Updated:
What being Corporate Secretary involves, and potential conflicts with being General Counsel
:
Updated:
Future thinkers, would you like to be quoted on management differences in 2013?
:
Updated:
Part XVIII of a collection of embedded metaposts
:
Updated:
An internal recruiter dedicated to the law department
:
Updated:
Architectural considerations for law departments
:
Updated:
Many law departments have offices in several countries
:
Updated:
Practical advice from four interactive webinars my Rees Morrison on how to manage outside counsel costs better
:
Updated:
It is quite conceivable to transition pending lawsuits to a new firm
:
Updated:
Quantifying the value proposition of regional and local law firms
:
Updated:
“Examine the ethical reputation of the law firm”
:
Updated:
Budgets for internal departmental costs: mechanics and other aspects
:
Updated:
Budgets for internal departmental costs and their component expenditures
:
Updated:
Should the law department absorb in its budget patent and trademark expenses?
:
Updated:
General ledger accounts for a medium-sized law department
:
Updated:
A longer look at temporary staff, and comparisons to contract staff
:
Updated:
Rees Morrison’s Morsels #79 – additions to earlier posts
:
Updated:
Intractables for law department managers: clients’ appropriate use of in-house lawyers
:
Updated:
General counsel as role models
:
Updated:
Translate legal spending into cents per share?
:
Updated:
Ethical concerns about alternative billing arrangements
:
Updated:
The pages, words and bulk of this blog, all for its mysterious, anonymous readers
:
Updated:
The fields general counsel typically or unusually shepherd
:
Updated:
Six suggestions for effective interviews (plus two additional ideas)
:
Updated:
General counsel are in control, except their own calendar
:
Updated:
Behavior change comes less from cognitive learning, more from “action learning”
:
Updated:
Companies and law departments – analogous multiple and conflicting roles
:
Updated:
Whether Myers-Briggs scores are useful
:
Updated:
Microsoft’s savings from using offshore patent support
:
Updated:
Periodic updates by lawyers prepared on a collective, online document
:
Updated:
Three internal communication methods other than for substantive legal developments
:
Updated:
Law firms suspected of ignoring cost control in relation to discovery
:
Updated:
Ways that our beliefs and values get in the way of effective management
:
Updated:
Total legal spend and the effects of insurance
:
Updated:
Larger law departments may have more legal expertise and thus lower costs
:
Updated:
Sycophancy and flattery by outside counsel
:
Updated:
Eye-popping cost of gathering lawyers from around the globe for a legal conference
:
Updated:
Are lawyers, professionals in every sense of that term, also intellectuals?
:
Updated:
Ten reasons why general counsel refuse to complete benchmarking surveys
:
Updated:
What if US law departments upped their management game significantly
:
Updated:
Dilbert lampoons in-house counsel
:
Updated:
Part XVII of a collection of embedded metaposts
:
Updated:
How to correct total legal spending as a percentage of revenue across industries
:
Updated:
Whether general counsel from higher LSAT schools manage their departments better
:
Updated:
Beyond teleconferencing, to the virtual meeting of telepresence
:
Updated:
Big law department will be watching you, external counsel, through your cell phone usage
:
Updated:
Three reasons from Brackett Denniston of GE to keep work inside the legal department
:
Updated:
The embodiment of much of what lawyers do, work product
:
Updated:
Posts from K&L Gates’ top of mind series
:
Updated:
The John Rawls principle of sufficient reason inspires this blogger
:
Updated:
Delegation of work within a law department
:
Updated:
Job rotations to build depth, reward upward strivers, spread knowledge
:
Updated:
A full load of posts on fully loaded costs per internal lawyer hour
:
Updated:
A wide vocabulary allows precision, but this paragraph is ridiculous
:
Updated:
Rawls’ “original position” and the values general counsel should support
:
Updated:
Management priorities of law departments in Belgium
:
Updated:
Blog posts on the next five largest corporations, and the regrettable absence of non-US departments
:
Updated:
Closely linking posts on law departments that partner with key law firms
:
Updated:
Subpoenas arrive constantly, and law departments have to deal with them
:
Updated:
Whether larger law departments slot work more cost-effectively to law firms
:
Updated:
Various levels in a law department and posts about their compensation
:
Updated:
Rees Morrison’s Morsels #78 – additions to earlier posts
:
Updated:
The goodly scope of pro bono projects
:
Updated:
Internal surveys of law department members as a tool to gather information
:
Updated:
Black Book Survey of legal process outsourcing by the Brown-Wilson Group
:
Updated:
Lawyers are often tagged as reluctant to run risks
:
Updated:
Should law departments be responsible for litigation-support data maps?
:
Updated:
Posts per trillion dollars on the world’s five largest corporations
:
Updated:
Worries about junior associates, many of whom are sleep deprived
:
Updated:
Part XVI of a collection of embedded metaposts
:
Updated:
Main leisure activities while people are at work
:
Updated:
It pays to understand the multiple components of legal department compensation
:
Updated:
Consultants to law departments and new services
:
Updated:
A general counsel and her litigation team decamp en masse for a law firm
:
Updated:
Work-life balance in law departments
:
Updated:
The grandee of metrics – total legal spend as a percentage of revenue
:
Updated:
Techniques that save legal costs, but without quantification
:
Updated:
Estimates of savings from various techniques
:
Updated:
“Matter management” vs “legal spend management”; “matter-centric” a useless neologism
:
Updated:
Not much written about lobbying or government affairs on this blog
:
Updated:
The sweet spot between steady-routine and periodic-specialty work
:
Updated:
Rees Morrison’s Morsels #77 – additions to earlier posts
:
Updated:
A handful of points about e-billing systems
:
Updated:
BT’s experience with secondments and shadowing in-house counsel
:
Updated:
Items of interest from the law-firm panel practices of BT
:
Updated:
Part XV of a collection of embedded metaposts
:
Updated:
Part XIV of a collection of embedded metaposts
:
Updated:
Part XIII of a collection of embedded metaposts
:
Updated:
Corporate governance as a typical concern of law departments
:
Updated:
Eleven blunt suggestions for how to cut litigation costs in half
:
Updated:
GC’s succumb to expensive, name firms to protect themselves from potential criticism
:
Updated:
Competitive bids
:
Updated:
Internal controls on compliance databases and reports
:
Updated:
Airing grievances that may affect productivity in legal departments
:
Updated:
Percentages of bills at rack hourly rates compared to discounted hourly rates
:
Updated:
Four uses of procurement staff by law departments
:
Updated:
Usefulness of IT applications supplied by law firms
:
Updated:
To whom is the general counsel primarily responsible?
:
Updated:
Law department management group on LinkedIn – join it and invite me as a connection
:
Updated:
Eight tips on how to conduct a panel review
:
Updated:
Law departments ask in RFPs about flexible working policies at law firms
:
Updated:
Three litigation cost controls: motions, depositions, and attendees at court conferences and depositions
:
Updated:
Total legal spending and its possible correlation with R&D spending
:
Updated:
Expertise and bench are the two primary reasons to retain outside counsel
:
Updated:
Part XII of a collection of embedded metaposts
:
Updated:
2009 Corporate Counsel World Summit
:
Updated:
Mistaken ideas about inside counsel as fixed costs at one-third the cost of outside counsel
:
Updated:
General Motors drives the use of minority and women lawyers on its matters, with targets
:
Updated:
A quiz with a reward about unusual vocabulary on this blog
:
Updated:
Incremental small steps to control costs are like kedging by sailors
:
Updated:
Methods of training employees and Board members on compliance issues
:
Updated:
Most frequently encountered legal risks for European companies
:
Updated:
Four functions, other than traditional legal ones, that report to European general counsel
:
Updated:
Collections of posts here on more than 100 topics – email and ask me for one
:
Updated:
More observations on general counsel compensation at Fortune 500 companies
:
Updated:
General counsel at huge US companies are handsomely rewarded
:
Updated:
The sibling role of the general counsel, corporate secretary
:
Updated:
Three unusual points about the general counsel of McDonalds
:
Updated:
Non-US general counsel often do not attend any Board of Directors meetings
:
Updated:
Allocation of responsibilities within the legal department of multinational companies
:
Updated:
How long after payment of an invoice can you examine the billing records of a law firm?
:
Updated:
Additional posts after my article on matter management systems
:
Updated:
Dispersion of lawyers at Sarah Lee but centralized reporting
:
Updated:
GE’s 12 percent reduction in costs between 2003 and 2005 from a 75% reduction in firms used
:
Updated:
Some waves come back from offshoring, such as patent prep at General Electric
:
Updated:
Hundreds of millions saved at GE by early case assessment and resolution
:
Updated:
Well-regarded law firms help a company avoid a governmental investigation
:
Updated:
Older lawyers need more light
:
Updated:
Layoffs in the law departments of staff and cases after the Nextel-Sprint merger
:
Updated:
Disparagement in a remark about in-house counsel
:
Updated:
An online knowledge repository for legal material at BAE Systems
:
Updated:
How to compare disbursement costs between firms and between matters
:
Updated:
As numbers of law department lawyers decline, inside expenses per lawyer increase
:
Updated:
Sticking to the law firms a law department likes – loyalty revisited
:
Updated:
Law firms get more work from a law department when a lawyer joins that department
:
Updated:
Two ideas regarding client satisfaction – unclear linkage to behavior and tipping points
:
Updated:
Good, OK, and improper intervention in law firm operations and an article on the topic
:
Updated:
This blogger’s attitude toward press releases from vendors to law departments
:
Updated:
The softer sides of law-department management are the hardest and most important
:
Updated:
Additional posts on discounts after publication of a recent article
:
Updated:
After a recent article, more posts on alternative fee arrangements
:
Updated:
Eleven challenges to moving lawyers abroad
:
Updated:
“33.5% of in-house counsel reported that law firm services are a commodity”
:
Updated:
More on the convergence effort of The Linde Group, and post-merger layoffs
:
Updated:
An excellent article on making values count in decisions
:
Updated:
Several important hiring criteria, according to a recent survey, only apply after some use
:
Updated:
Strong law departments lose talented lawyers – and to a degree that’s a good thing
:
Updated:
Steeplechase for the general counsel who takes the position from outside the company
:
Updated:
Not every in-house lawyer wants to become the general counsel
:
Updated:
Lawyers who “plateau” should not be disparaged
:
Updated:
Hard to draw clear lines for when someone in a law department should get a spot bonus
:
Updated:
The odds you will reach settlement vary according to tryptophan and serotonin levels
:
Updated:
Nothing seems difficult to the person who didn’t have to do it – grading law firms
:
Updated:
Good reporting of survey results tells how many respondents answered individual questions
:
Updated:
A possible benchmark regarding offers extended and accepted
:
Updated:
Rees Morrison’s Morsels #76 – additions to earlier posts
:
Updated:
Part XI of a collection of embedded metaposts
:
Updated:
A bonus! An extra listing about posts on bonus arrangements with law firms
:
Updated:
Global is a complex term, subject to many definitions and connotations
:
Updated:
Further commentary on my conclusion that a headline lacks quantitative reliability
:
Updated:
Possible content of a three-year plan for the legal function
:
Updated:
All the posts here I collected, preserved, reviewed and produced about electronic discovery
:
Updated:
The variety of benefits for in-house counsel
:
Updated:
Your major law firms should have relationship partners and even engagement partners
:
Updated:
Bait-and-switch by law firms proposing to handle your work
:
Updated:
Vigilant vendors keep an eye on costs charged by foreign patent agents
:
Updated:
Compensation and benefits accounts for 75% or more of total inside spend
:
Updated:
Large law departments increased internal expenses twice as fast as all the departments in a survey
:
Updated:
Selection bias in surveys of law departments
:
Updated:
Brainstorming in groups or with individuals who then join groups; idea quantity and quality
:
Updated:
On survey methodology
:
Updated:
Multiple cautions about multiple-choice questions on surveys
:
Updated:
Comparative data over four years on total legal spending as a percentage of revenue
:
Updated:
“Resources” is the wrong word for people who work in law departments
:
Updated:
Part X of a collection of embedded metaposts
:
Updated:
Three points regarding your law firms if you want them to work on fixed fees
:
Updated:
More horses for courses: clients can choose the best match of personnel within a law firm
:
Updated:
Four fundamental questions to answer when the lawyer responsible for a matter reviews an invoice
:
Updated:
Law department attendees at conference flail law firms on efficiency – who’s to blame?
:
Updated:
Remove compliance and ethics from the law department
:
Updated:
Admirable characteristics of a medium size law department regarding talent
:
Updated:
My worry at the core of the core-team concept
:
Updated:
Who cares if parochial, junior lawyers opine on global growth and its affect on legal work?
:
Updated:
Rees Morrison’s Morsels #75 – additions to earlier posts
:
Updated:
Employee engagement results from “business, boss, buddies and briefs” – Part IV
:
Updated:
A brief encounter with some legal processes, and a dubious process
:
Updated:
Employee engagement results from “business, boss, buddies and briefs” – Part III
:
Updated:
A clever idea to deal with travel costs to an exotic retreat location
:
Updated:
Do big companies dance mostly with big law firms?
:
Updated:
A picture worth a thousand words about the proper role of general counsel
:
Updated:
On autarky, plus a benchmark for the percentage of legal work handled inside
:
Updated:
Processes and an emphasis on old-school efficiency or new-age learning
:
Updated:
General counsel as head of legal as well as member of the executive management team
:
Updated:
Half-time partner, half-time general counsel – full-time exhaustion
:
Updated:
A method to rate outside-counsel guidelines
:
Updated:
A disconcerting impression of lawyers who walk and speak with ear plugs
:
Updated:
Self insurance by large US companies has moved claims to law and increased its size?
:
Updated:
Internal audit eyes a matter management system and its processes
:
Updated:
Do ethical companies spend less on their legal budgets?
:
Updated:
The commonness of some of the common words related to law-department management
:
Updated:
The fraction of your company’s value you would attribute to your legal function
:
Updated:
This post is entitled “titles”
:
Updated:
We need a multiple regression of lawyer experience against staffing levels and spend
:
Updated:
Individual lawyers, making risky decisions, are the key to saving money on outside counsel
:
Updated:
Priorities for in-house counsel
:
Updated:
A reader takes a different view than I did on “trust” toward law firms
:
Updated:
Plan for the future, but be wary of strategic plans
:
Updated:
Interview subject matter experts as a technique for knowledge management
:
Updated:
Another outpouring on offshoring (aka rightshoring)
:
Updated:
Workers’ comp should not be part of the law department
:
Updated:
In-house patent lawyers pay off
:
Updated:
Evolutionary economics and law department–law firm relations
:
Updated:
How lawyers’ brains function and how neuroscience will boost their capabilities
:
Updated:
Tools, processes and concepts related to managing law departments
:
Updated:
The legalization of various tasks and resulting burdens on law departments
:
Updated:
Limits on billable hours by inside and outside counsel
:
Updated:
In-house paralegals and legal assistants
:
Updated:
A Wall of Shame for practice groups that don’t reduce the amounts paid on law firm invoices
:
Updated:
Preferred methods to communicate with distant colleagues
:
Updated:
Further reflections on culture in law departments
:
Updated:
Dubious data on North American law-department challenges
:
Updated:
Whether trust in outside counsel outranks all other criteria
:
Updated:
A truism for all buyers, over-heatedly applied to buyers of legal services
:
Updated:
Bonus to law firm for reductions in law suits for and against the client
:
Updated:
Digging into some savings figures for e-billing technology
:
Updated:
Geographically dispersed lawyers, but a tool to help them reach each other
:
Updated:
An example of crossing the line from lawyer to business executive
:
Updated:
Barristeristas? Starbucks varies from the typical ratio of one lawyer for every non-lawyer
:
Updated:
Two steps headquarters lawyers can do to keep field lawyers feeling part of the team
:
Updated:
An example of legal services for real estate priced on a fixed fee
:
Updated:
Instruct law firms how to handle calls directly from clients
:
Updated:
A popularity ranking for blogs covering in-house legal departments
:
Updated:
Diverse commentary on this blog regarding diversity
:
Updated:
A project team to evaluate replacement of a document management system
:
Updated:
In-house legal teams and alignment with clients
:
Updated:
Harbinger of lower litigation costs: an upsurge of circumstances that favor defendants
:
Updated:
MBA’s galore at Caterpillar’s law department
:
Updated:
Law firm partners ought to value opportunities to train in-house counsel at clients
:
Updated:
For purposes of whether to use RFPs, “nondiscretionary legal spending” is nonsensical
:
Updated:
Unusual history between a law department and an e-discovery service provider
:
Updated:
Law departments of US companies with significant foreign revenue have many overseas lawyers
:
Updated:
A general counsel goes to bat for his troops and gets a valued exception to company policy
:
Updated:
GM’s legal department sold four patents it obtained for its technology
:
Updated:
Part IX of a collection of embedded metaposts
:
Updated:
Six figure savings through Six Sigma at Caterpillar
:
Updated:
One out of five top compliance officers report to the general counsel
:
Updated:
Rees Morrison’s Morsels #74 – additions to earlier posts
:
Updated:
Matter budgets: inside accountability and the principal-agent tension
:
Updated:
Not safe for general counsel to enter the water
:
Updated:
A metric on litigation and employment matters handled without using outside counsel
:
Updated:
Rapid growth at an Abu Dhabi-based law department
:
Updated:
Important terms diluted by over-use: best practice, innovation, leadership, strategic, world-class
:
Updated:
Out in front on leadership
:
Updated:
So many cottage industries thrive on law departments! A village!
:
Updated:
Some of the cognitive woes that stress causes
:
Updated:
A new general counsel from outside the company often cleans house
:
Updated:
Very high figures for external legal spend by an e-biller’s client base
:
Updated:
Two categories of service providers: investigators and counterfeit trackers
:
Updated:
Events that encourage headhunters to circle a law department
:
Updated:
Law firm used only for early case assessment
:
Updated:
Self praise for “Legal recommendations in line with our core values” – but whose aren’t?
:
Updated:
RFP processes for individual matters
:
Updated:
Observations on a large-scale RFP process by Exelon
:
Updated:
Four reasons why the general counsel “is a good choice to help manage risk”
:
Updated:
A fundamental challenge for general counsel: balancing company vs business unit views
:
Updated:
Data that may not say much at all about convergence
:
Updated:
More data on the ways in-house counsel find new law firms
:
Updated:
Legal-department retreats, some observations, and an article by Rees Morrison
:
Updated:
Ten Cs of employee engagement and corporate counsel correlates
:
Updated:
Commodity legal services, routine legal services, and standardized legal services: the same?
:
Updated:
Differences between competition, non-cooperation, conflict, and sabotage
:
Updated:
Total litigation spend of large American corporations as percentage of profits
:
Updated:
The rare need for a law department to retain appellate counsel
:
Updated:
Three new technologies IBM is working on its Innovation Labs
:
Updated:
Have we recently shot from stagnation in the legal industry to hyper-change? No
:
Updated:
A shameful way to turn your law department into a profit center
:
Updated:
General counsel need to serve as references for service providers
:
Updated:
Client satisfaction survey by a firm and possible learning by a law department
:
Updated:
Aspects of in-house work that sometimes boost and sometimes burst morale
:
Updated:
Rees Morrison’s Morsels #73 – additions to earlier posts
:
Updated:
“The current growth in law firm fees [is] not sustainable
:
Updated:
With external counsel, lines between social activities and professional dealings
:
Updated:
A disappointing bit of advice: Keep lawyers away during gut-wrenching decisions
:
Updated:
Thoughts on benchmarking other than about individual metrics
:
Updated:
When legal tasks are shipped offshore, it threatens the jobs of some in-house lawyers and staff
:
Updated:
Sometimes bumpy relations with outside auditors
:
Updated:
Employee engagement results from “business, boss, buddies and briefs” – Part II
:
Updated:
Recent survey results on morale busters that also have an upside
:
Updated:
Part VIII of a collection of embedded metaposts
:
Updated:
Two metrics for identifying law firms over which you have leverage
:
Updated:
Seems like IP lawyers ought to be core competencies quite frequently
:
Updated:
Risk of loss of non-lawyer specialists in law departments
:
Updated:
Record and circulate nuggets of learning from day-to-day work
:
Updated:
Personality attributes and in-house lawyers
:
Updated:
Some lay “laws” that pertain to inside lawyers
:
Updated:
Goodhart’s Law –measures should not become targets
:
Updated:
Law firms ought to mine their own business (data), to your benefit
:
Updated:
Continuing posts on Legal Education – “I can CLE now, the rain has gone…”
:
Updated:
Hundreds of thousands of dollars to relocate a new general counsel
:
Updated:
Legal specialties aren’t likely candidates for core competencies
:
Updated:
Core competencies and what differences emphasis on them ought to make
:
Updated:
Core competencies revisited and surveyed
:
Updated:
Client satisfaction scores only obliquely assess outside counsel
:
Updated:
Rees Morrison’s Morsels #72 – additions to earlier posts
:
Updated:
Mission statements, values declarations, and vision projections
:
Updated:
Tips for how a generalist lawyer can most effectively learn from a specialist lawyer
:
Updated:
Experience curve theory and plausible applications in law departments
:
Updated:
A small portion of anything accounts for a large portion of importance
:
Updated:
Activity-based costing (ABC) is hardly the alpha-to-omega of legal cost reporting
:
Updated:
A sensible percentage of lawyers who manage outside counsel?
:
Updated:
Challenge number one – workload and time pressure?
:
Updated:
Twelve tools that purportedly help managers find and reduce costs
:
Updated:
Do what seems to make sense, even if no other law department can be found that has tried it
:
Updated:
Law departments rarely benchmark processes
:
Updated:
Help clients help themselves and your department’s productivity will increase
:
Updated:
Collect data to report, but go beyond and use the data to make better decisions
:
Updated:
The back-office (and often hidden) costs of paying law firms
:
Updated:
Typing proficiency of in-house lawyers – one secret to productivity
:
Updated:
Ask the partner who bills you to include on the bill time written off
:
Updated:
Monthly flat fees for lengthy and expensive litigation; dubious as an alternative fee arrangement
:
Updated:
“E-billing technology changes the way the law department does business.” Yeah right
:
Updated:
Typical in-house lawyer in the US can take a month of vacation each year
:
Updated:
Comments on the methodology of survey results on morale boosters vs busters
:
Updated:
Rees Morrison’s Morsels #71 – additions to earlier posts
:
Updated:
Are good general counsel transplantable to any industry?
:
Updated:
Why it’s hard to reconcile your matter management system to your accounts payable system
:
Updated:
The beneficence of quicker bill payment
:
Updated:
Six major universities, full of brains, but without a general counsel
:
Updated:
Part VII of a collection of embedded metaposts
:
Updated:
What is the difference between customized software and configured software?
:
Updated:
The key to improving your rate of learning is to correctly space practice sessions
:
Updated:
Instant feedback after departmental meetings!
:
Updated:
Exporting reports from matter management systems to a spreadsheet
:
Updated:
A free, online site where you can experiment with neat ways to present data
:
Updated:
Rebates from airlines to law firms and whether they should be passed through to clients
:
Updated:
Seven more visual methods to portray law department data
:
Updated:
A menagerie of terms for legal specialists in-house
:
Updated:
A hat trick of ways to cull out law firms in an RFP process
:
Updated:
Tell me your particular interest and I’ll send you posts from this blog on that topic
:
Updated:
Collected thoughts and posts on in-house lawyers who are specialists
:
Updated:
Should the law department run a company’s anti-counterfeiting activities?
:
Updated:
An article about Rees Morrison’s favorite blog and what it offers him and others
:
Updated:
Layoff repercussions and a possible boomerang from career-development offerings
:
Updated:
When to allow external counsel to work directly with internal clients
:
Updated:
An extreme reduction of external counsel, done with RFPs
:
Updated:
Eleven methods to represent quantitative data for the eye, with data visualization
:
Updated:
Consolidated references to in-house discovery teams
:
Updated:
Monthly breakfasts where the general counsel invites some members of the law department
:
Updated:
“Does it make sense for a legal department to have an external blog?”
:
Updated:
Rees Morrison’s Morsels #70 – additions to earlier posts
:
Updated:
Thoughts about effective billing rates in relation to fully-loaded internal costs
:
Updated:
First general counsel, and astonishing prerequisites for the position
:
Updated:
Complexities of having both regional general counsel and business unit general counsel
:
Updated:
Do be caught napping, since research reveals that sleep enhances memory
:
Updated:
High participation rates in a massive employee-satisfaction poll
:
Updated:
Sound mind in a sound body – even moderate exercise improves cognitive performance
:
Updated:
Esq-harmony anyone? Computerized matchmaking between law firms and law departments
:
Updated:
Difficulties US law departments have when they seek a law firm in India
:
Updated:
Easy steps a law department can take to reduce energy consumption
:
Updated:
Law departments of Chinese companies
:
Updated:
If the matter is big, forget alternative fee arrangements
:
Updated:
Management observations from an award-winning litigation-hold dashboard
:
Updated:
Read this slowly — speed-reading is a myth
:
Updated:
Deputy general counsel — no less than three of them in one small department!
:
Updated:
Profits from law departments through patent licenses and enforcement
:
Updated:
The controversy rages on about whether in-house lawyers should append “Esq.”
:
Updated:
Law departments will be able to view videos of lawyers they might retain
:
Updated:
When you scream at someone, minds all around shut down
:
Updated:
The economic and environmental costs of filing cabinets
:
Updated:
In-house specialist lawyers and the schema created by the neocortex
:
Updated:
The marketing unclout of a law firm’s ethical infrastructure
:
Updated:
Law firms, law departments and the asymmetry of concern about money
:
Updated:
Quantitative case analysis and some of its debilitations
:
Updated:
A word to the wise on a world of pharmaceuticals that might increase mental ability
:
Updated:
Drink to me only with thine caffeine …
:
Updated:
Conflicts, capacity, chemistry and competency all narrow what seems to be a range of desirable law firms
:
Updated:
Differences in aggressive behavior between men and women
:
Updated:
Skip task codes, try linguistic modeling on bills!
:
Updated:
Continuous flow of ideas about how to manage a law department does not necessarily lead to consensus
:
Updated:
Not too sure about this method of marketing by a law firm – a firm’s client calls you, a prospect
:
Updated:
Quasi-legal work, knowledge management, technology, and offshoring all stirred together
:
Updated:
Three reasons why PDAs create compulsive users
:
Updated:
Routine UK legal queries to be answered by HSBC bank’s offshore center
:
Updated:
Four observations on a statement about data mapping software
:
Updated:
Understand how discounts cut into firm profit margins, and drive demand for more volume
:
Updated:
Electronic receipt of invoices should be treated separately from transmission of approved invoices to accounts payable
:
Updated:
Twins (2), braids (3), and DNA (4) as metaphors for the number of fundamental management concerns
:
Updated:
Quasi-legal tasks and the blog posts here that have addressed them
:
Updated:
Reward systems for inventors, and their knock-on effect for in-house patent lawyers
:
Updated:
An argument for intellectual property not reporting to the general counsel: little commercial savvy
:
Updated:
To freeze billing rates on specific matters might be better than to obtain discounts
:
Updated:
Commuting time as productive time
:
Updated:
Three reasons why lawyers, being human, are bad at making predictions
:
Updated:
Law departments commonly talk with their law firms about collaborative technologies
:
Updated:
Reported savings from matter management and e-billing systems
:
Updated:
Costs to relocate lawyers
:
Updated:
Pervasive mistrust by law departments who doubt that law firms manage costs well
:
Updated:
Rees Morrison leaves Thomson, forms his own consulting firm
:
Updated:
Multiple recipients of payments at each law firm retained, and the administrative costs to a department
:
Updated:
New-lawyer orientation: on-boarding and its value
:
Updated:
A partner premium, but nothing paid for associates
:
Updated:
Benchmarking law against other staff departments in a company
:
Updated:
Fee arrangements and the varying profitability of law-firm practice groups
:
Updated:
Will legal directories diminish the value of the general counsel?
:
Updated:
Quarrels with chemistry as a basis for law-firm selection
:
Updated:
A better technique to rank law firms on their RFP metrics
:
Updated:
Tinder for a tender subject – law firms fired because of competitions and convergence
:
Updated:
When lawyers use their laptops during meetings
:
Updated:
This blog selected to be among Forbes’ collection of business blogs
:
Updated:
RFP – Request for Proposal and Really Full of Posts
:
Updated:
A PDF compilation of my recent articles on spending – third of three collections
:
Updated:
Three bumps on the road to value pricing
:
Updated:
The flip side of innovation is risk aversion
:
Updated:
Cottage industry: lawyers who consult on compliance, corporate governance, and ethics
:
Updated:
To get right to the point, you are what you write
:
Updated:
Should you track the point where your law department is brought in on a matter? No
:
Updated:
It matters how you define matters and files
:
Updated:
Questions to consider when you think you might create a written policy
:
Updated:
Document-clustering software that reduces the costs of discovery
:
Updated:
Knowledge management efforts and technology at Cisco Systems
:
Updated:
Technology and Six Sigma applied to a flood of hard-copy invoices
:
Updated:
A closer look at the physical appearance of in-house counsel
:
Updated:
Rees Morrison’s Morsels #69 – additions to earlier posts
:
Updated:
Listen to this prognostication: law departments will use hypersonic sound to communicate
:
Updated:
Randomized tests and experiments by law departments
:
Updated:
The activities of in-house patent lawyers, aside from litigation
:
Updated:
Some data about plans of general counsel not to expand internal litigation support staff
:
Updated:
How to reduce the number of law firms you retain — a convergence project
:
Updated:
360-degree assessments from several angles
:
Updated:
Send sample cases to law departments to compare inside and outside costs. Really?
:
Updated:
How to handle law firm budgets on matters
:
Updated:
Moot court judges as pro bono and promoters of law department practice
:
Updated:
Another network of law firms, ALFA International
:
Updated:
Call to Action Summit to goad progress on diversity in the law
:
Updated:
Patent Review Committees as a management microcosm – four general management lessons
:
Updated:
Stretching to include another point on price inelasticity faced by law departments
:
Updated:
From an advisory board of a Magic Circle firm, contract costs and SLAs
:
Updated:
Let me raise the lance again against “risk management”
:
Updated:
Part VI of a collection of embedded metaposts
:
Updated:
Does in-house pay correspond to the value of a practice area to the company?
:
Updated:
Mission statements as wastes of time
:
Updated:
Law departments face price inelasticity, and have three ways to deal with it
:
Updated:
What law departments could gain if they shared evaluations and data about law firms
:
Updated:
Thoughts on marketing by law firms and the susceptibility of in-house attorneys to ads
:
Updated:
Human capital theory and job fit as applied to law departments
:
Updated:
Interim general counsel and what that role suggests
:
Updated:
Attacks on the morality of law-department lawyers
:
Updated:
Biometric scanners in the New York City Law Department
:
Updated:
Web 2.0 will be coming soon to law departments near you!
:
Updated:
Would that there were a public warehouse of electronic survey data about law departments!
:
Updated:
Smiley and frowny faces for in-house counsel: emotipros and emoticons
:
Updated:
Layoffs from law departments
:
Updated:
From game theory, an application of the prisoner’s dilemma to law departments
:
Updated:
Rees Morrison’s Morsels #68 – additions to earlier posts
:
Updated:
If you are not in the law department, but are a lawyer, can you identify yourself as “Esq.”?
:
Updated:
The Council on Ethical Billing – annual conference today and tomorrow
:
Updated:
Highest paid practice areas for US in-house counsel
:
Updated:
Pay increases as law departments grow, but total legal spending declines
:
Updated:
Twenty-five-percent gaps in median cash compensation between each level
:
Updated:
A PDF compilation of my recent articles on outside-counsel cost control
:
Updated:
The importance of capable red-lining software
:
Updated:
An elegant set of recent articles on legal-department productivity – email it to a colleague!
:
Updated:
A foundational decision for a general counsel: to make or buy legal experience
:
Updated:
Trading cycle-time reduction against leaving cases dormant
:
Updated:
On outside counsel guidelines, hardline and detailed or broad and directional
:
Updated:
How to go off the chart with the familiar org chart
:
Updated:
Policies on spending minimums for budgets of law firms on individual matters
:
Updated:
Three thoughts about best practices for law departments
:
Updated:
Law departments should not charge ahead with internal time charge backs
:
Updated:
How much does industry profitability influence in-house compensation?
:
Updated:
Law departments of corporate spin-offs often need to add specialist lawyers
:
Updated:
Observations about the profusion of surveys that invite law departments to respond
:
Updated:
Surveys of law departments written about on this blog during 2007
:
Updated:
Hard-to-find, useful metrics on the frequency and cost of expert witnesses
:
Updated:
Rees Morrison’s Morsels #67 – additions to earlier posts
:
Updated:
To set targets is not as effective as to promote behaviors
:
Updated:
A retrospective on invoice review
:
Updated:
A second book on the history of New York City’s law department
:
Updated:
In-house counsel do get laid off in hard times
:
Updated:
Conference room reservation systems
:
Updated:
More sources of online information about law departments — BlogPulse
:
Updated:
A troubling conjecture about cost creep with procured services
:
Updated:
Getting a fix on fixed fees
:
Updated:
Where’s the luster of DuPont in light of its metrics on legal spend and staff?
:
Updated:
Litigation loads and handling cases in-house through trial
:
Updated:
Part V of a collection of embedded metaposts
:
Updated:
Charging back clients for outside-counsel costs
:
Updated:
Fees owed to temp agencies when you hire someone they placed with your legal team
:
Updated:
Developments and capabilities that would be useful for this blog
:
Updated:
The balance of my posts on balanced scorecards
:
Updated:
Fee arrangements based on future events can unravel if the law department changes goals
:
Updated:
Software from Exari that helps you prepare and manage contracts
:
Updated:
Total cost of litigation of Fortune 500 in 2006: $210 billion
:
Updated:
Every general counsel should stop the law department from doing inane, wasteful procedures
:
Updated:
More improvements to e-mail practices
:
Updated:
Service providers for bill and regulation tracking
:
Updated:
Try an alternate reality game (ARG) at your next lawyers’ retreat
:
Updated:
Exercise jogs a lawyer’s brain
:
Updated:
Practice area benchmarks for seven practices
:
Updated:
How much time do in-house attorneys waste in a typical day?
:
Updated:
Thoughts on this blog’s third anniversary
:
Updated:
Context-specific data from the internet to supplement information in matter management systems
:
Updated:
Analytical tools to help customize legal fees for clients
:
Updated:
Upscale research into how large companies purchase corporate legal services
:
Updated:
Information architecture – “the art and science of organizing electronic information”
:
Updated:
A podcast by this blogger on how to improve your department’s RFP processes
:
Updated:
General counsel need to know the legal positions and actions of companies with shared directors
:
Updated:
Dictation with a personal digital assistant
:
Updated:
Special steps taken to protect attorney-client privilege for in-house litigators
:
Updated:
Annual average increases in outside-counsel hourly rates
:
Updated:
Unbalanced focus on high-end billing rates
:
Updated:
Different interpretations of block billing
:
Updated:
The average Fortune 500 lawsuit takes three years to resolve
:
Updated:
A warped cost driver: outside counsel who put in long hours (big bills) and thereby get referrals
:
Updated:
College of Law Practice InnovAction Award for law departments
:
Updated:
Rees Morrison’s Morsels #66 – additions to earlier posts
:
Updated:
A panel selection in Britain and a conference for the panel firms
:
Updated:
Compensation increases for in-house lawyers in the UK
:
Updated:
Professional networking sites for in-house counsel
:
Updated:
PDAs and their boosts to productivity and personal time
:
Updated:
General counsel don’t prolong litigation to spread costs over multiple years
:
Updated:
The number one reason clients fire law firm is lack of responsiveness?
:
Updated:
Another way to spend your budget — an Internet survey on brand confusion
:
Updated:
Multitasking drags down lawyer productivity
:
Updated:
Blogs by in-house lawyers or specifically for law departments
:
Updated:
The $2 billion US firm, Latham & Watkins, and thoughts on client influence over billionaire firms
:
Updated:
Ill-effects of partners shuttling among law firms
:
Updated:
The Law Department practice group of the International Legal Technology Association
:
Updated:
In vino veritas: the neurological rush from paying expensive law firms
:
Updated:
Law departments can choose to use offshore staff or onshore staff of a US firm
:
Updated:
A team at a law firm plans to include academics
:
Updated:
Perhaps the assumption of 1,850 chargeable hours a year per in-house lawyer is too high
:
Updated:
Costs wasted because of futile searches for emails
:
Updated:
A law department and a law firm team up to offer a joint program for diverse summer associates
:
Updated:
Rees Morrison’s Morsels #65 – additions to earlier posts
:
Updated:
A shout-out to those who have posted comments on this blog
:
Updated:
An abundance of posts on decisions, and guidelines for how to decide on the ones you want
:
Updated:
Convergence – a reprise of the topic
:
Updated:
Auctions conducted by law departments to choose firms for work
:
Updated:
Top referring domains to this blog, Law Department Management
:
Updated:
Part V of a collection of metaposts: 10 more of them
:
Updated:
Attorney-client privilege posts on this blog
:
Updated:
Uses of flow charts and short summaries, including to explain choices to clients
:
Updated:
Six Sigma and three times six posts on the topic
:
Updated:
Varied rates for practice areas in legal fees paid compared to settlement costs paid
:
Updated:
More expertise for finding expert witnesses
:
Updated:
Two multi-day education programs for in-house counsel
:
Updated:
DuPont’s spending on settlements and judgments – around $800 million in the past three years
:
Updated:
Cultural symbolism of the general counsel’s physical office
:
Updated:
Examples of correlations in law department management
:
Updated:
Administrators, invaluable to help law departments perform well
:
Updated:
Survey analysts ought to explore correlations among data, and quantify the relationships
:
Updated:
How can a law department quantify the percentage of work done inside and outside?
:
Updated:
The law department is only one player, and a modest one, in a company’s total observance of the laws
:
Updated:
If law firms hire fewer new associates, won’t senior associates do work not worth their rates?
:
Updated:
Five ideas for cool things to do on retreats
:
Updated:
Some manifestations of a dysfunctional law department
:
Updated:
Management by walking around – a badge of honor for good leaders
:
Updated:
Law department silos in structure and operations
:
Updated:
The challenges and rewards of content analysis for survey responses
:
Updated:
Most US law departments are small – about 60 percent have five or fewer lawyers
:
Updated:
A law department whose lawyers “never say no”
:
Updated:
Adverse selection as it applies to law departments
:
Updated:
Twenty-seven software packages for law departments, other than basic programs
:
Updated:
Why in-house litigators should actually litigate, not just “manage” litigation
:
Updated:
What gifts and of what value can law department lawyers ethically accept?
:
Updated:
Track client usage of legal documents on your intranet site
:
Updated:
The math that explains why a crowd of laymen can outdo a small group of experts
:
Updated:
More disadvantages of low attrition rates in law departments
:
Updated:
Large law departments yet nary an administrator in sight
:
Updated:
Infrastructure in a law department is tangible and doesn’t move
:
Updated:
An excursus on “productivity” compared to “capacity”
:
Updated:
Total legal spending declines with revenue growth, and my recent article explains why
:
Updated:
Nine ways to improve your guidelines for outside counsel
:
Updated:
Rees Morrison’s Morsels #64 – Additions to earlier posts
:
Updated:
General counsel compensation rises about $100,000 for every five-to-ten lawyers, up to 25
:
Updated:
Google at LegalTech NY and its possible forays into law-department software
:
Updated:
A new matter management system, used by major global law departments, from Brazil
:
Updated:
Multiple regression analysis: an example from a law department with customer arbitrations
:
Updated:
A metric for corporate secretary functions: cost per entity maintained
:
Updated:
What is the meaning of “Center of Excellence?
:
Updated:
Benchmarks: posts after my article on three key benchmarks
:
Updated:
An alleged unwillingness of in-house counsel to go to trial except for very important cases
:
Updated:
Visits to and from other departments as a way to benchmark practices
:
Updated:
Part IV of a collection of metaposts: 10 more of them
:
Updated:
Part IV of a collection of metaposts: 10 more of them (second part)
:
Updated:
Part III of a collection of metaposts: 10 more of them
:
Updated:
Part II of a collection of metaposts: 10 more of them
:
Updated:
Part I of a collection of metaposts: 10 of them
:
Updated:
A good point in favor of occasional, specialist billers in law firms
:
Updated:
An interview of me about convergence memorialized in an article
:
Updated:
In praise of piles
:
Updated:
Expert witness sources
:
Updated:
Six Sigma efforts earn Textron’s law department public praise by the company’s CEO
:
Updated:
Reduce outside counsel fees – hire female partners
:
Updated:
Cost per hour of high-level inside lawyers can exceed $280
:
Updated:
Norms, the look and feel of a law department
:
Updated:
Rees Morrison’s Morsels #63 – Additions to earlier posts
:
Updated:
Practical tips on e-billing implementations
:
Updated:
Few law departments consider themselves as part of end-to-end processes
:
Updated:
Women in e-Discovery as a resource for women who support law department technology
:
Updated:
Listservs as a way to exchange information with like-minded people
:
Updated:
Look at your equipment maintenance agreements as a cost-saving opportunity
:
Updated:
Rebates from law firms were too hard to administer
:
Updated:
High partner rates should not distract us from the fundamentals of departmental and law-firm costs
:
Updated:
How hard it is to locate a partner with a specialty by searching the internet
:
Updated:
Association of Litigation Support Professionals [ALSP]
:
Updated:
How to tell a firm it was not selected, yet keep it in the next chase
:
Updated:
Working from home: four pros and four cons
:
Updated:
The peregrinations of one Russian general counsel
:
Updated:
Offshore legal services for CIT: NDAs and email surveillance
:
Updated:
Compensation, three-quarters of internal spend, and lawyer comp is three quarters of comp
:
Updated:
Selectively charge clients for services they want that are less valuable than other services
:
Updated:
Budgets proposed with rounded-off amounts might be less effective in a competition
:
Updated:
Smile your way to financial success in the law department
:
Updated:
Managers should ponder the direction and reality of cause and effect when they make decisions
:
Updated:
Four sources of information about law firms available from Martindale-Hubble
:
Updated:
Several unusual sources of information about law departments
:
Updated:
The core-team concept carried to an extreme
:
Updated:
How to learn more from the invoices your law department processes
:
Updated:
Lessons learned from a secondment
:
Updated:
Business continuity (disaster planning) for law departments
:
Updated:
Degrees of freedom as a management concept
:
Updated:
Law firm managing partners appear to care more about compensation than representation
:
Updated:
Why lawyers sometimes balk at being told what to do – psychological reactance
:
Updated:
Drawbacks of meetings as a method to aggregate reliable information
:
Updated:
Dual accountability between a law firm and a law department
:
Updated:
The power of peer influence in a law department
:
Updated:
Fund an internal idea initiative for innovation
:
Updated:
Unconvincing difference between brand and reputation of law firms and law departments
:
Updated:
Knowledge management efforts have much value as pointers to humans
:
Updated:
Concentration of spending by law departments on the two firms paid the most
:
Updated:
The long tail of those who bill short time periods on matters
:
Updated:
A statistical coincidence between law-firm disbursements and law-department expenses?
:
Updated:
An explanation for why legal departments get little technology support from corporate
:
Updated:
Let me count the ways we handle discounts
:
Updated:
A PDF of my article that attacks most-favored-nation expectations by law departments
:
Updated:
Linkedin as a social network for law department lawyers
:
Updated:
Tap into employee satisfaction through an online bulletin-board system
:
Updated:
To script or not to script the meetings you hold with firms that are competing for work
:
Updated:
What if the general counsel is a bully?
:
Updated:
These days, many more levels of timekeepers in law firms
:
Updated:
Retain two firms in each country where your department has ongoing legal needs
:
Updated:
Unknown reduction in benchmark numbers for privately-held or non-US owned companies
:
Updated:
Do you want to be one of your primary firms’ profitable clients?
:
Updated:
Courage and law department management
:
Updated:
Rating professional development programs for strong lawyers in terms of retention
:
Updated:
Are general counsel “unconcerned with losing top performers”?
:
Updated:
Rees Morrison’s Morsels #62 – Additions to earlier posts
:
Updated:
The economic clout of major US companies’ law departments – but perplexing metrics
:
Updated:
Two technologies at one law department – multiple monitors and headphones
:
Updated:
The three roles important for any internal e-discovery team, plus one
:
Updated:
Proposals in competitive bids tell you market costs, not actual costs
:
Updated:
The disparaging term “cost center” is not deserved
:
Updated:
Legal spend is on the frontier of procurement’s sourcing control
:
Updated:
National Arbitration Forum blog
:
Updated:
Collected firings on the brains of “cognitive lawyers”
:
Updated:
A dubious metric on the average cost of a case, or e-discovery, or something
:
Updated:
Rolling budgets as a possible improvement for management
:
Updated:
How law departments distribute arriving letters and other hard-copy mail
:
Updated:
Report legal issues encountered, not time worked by internal lawyers
:
Updated:
What topical categories interest recent readers of this blog
:
Updated:
Delay saps the attraction of competitive bids, alternative fees, and procurement disciplines
:
Updated:
Law department intervention: over-reaching and asking too much of law firms — Part III
:
Updated:
Counter-intuitive, but why not benchmark bad practices?
:
Updated:
Rees Morrison’s Morsels #61 – Additions to earlier posts
:
Updated:
Inflated self-image as an obstacle to improvements in productivity
:
Updated:
Three ways for law-firm invoices to disclose discounts
:
Updated:
Employee engagement in a law department results from “business, boss, buddies and briefs” – Part I
:
Updated:
Law department intervention: management influence over operations of key law firms – Part II
:
Updated:
Law department intervention: entitlements from law firms – Part I
:
Updated:
An ugly suggestion about the homely looks of lawyers in law departments
:
Updated:
A bizarre case study about a procurement situation
:
Updated:
Unrealistic to demand that law firms charge “actual costs” for internal disbursements
:
Updated:
The value of ethnography in understanding law departments
:
Updated:
How to minimize career progression angst
:
Updated:
Lessons from a recent all-lawyer conference
:
Updated:
Transaction cost economics and risks when law departments retain law firms
:
Updated:
A poor example of the contingent power model – promotions of lawyers to CEO
:
Updated:
Information organization: first order, second order and third order
:
Updated:
Why I stopped my posts on writing – the late, not lamented series of Inside Write Stuff
:
Updated:
“Socialization,” an important concept and term for law department managers
:
Updated:
Retrospective thoughts on my writings about this blog’s posts
:
Updated:
A hypothesis for how infrequently in-house lawyers retain a firm that is new to the lawyer
:
Updated:
Downsides to hiring a consultant for management advice
:
Updated:
Rees Morrison’s Morsels #60 – Additions to earlier posts
:
Updated:
How to make a success of flex-time and telecommuting – alternative hour arrangements
:
Updated:
Law department practice emphasizes productivity more than innovation
:
Updated:
For very expensive matters, increase the frequency with which your firm bills you
:
Updated:
For corporate counsel, some methods for how to organize your work
:
Updated:
Flickr and photos related to law departments – exciting new research!
:
Updated:
Another view that the term “legal risk” has little useful meaning
:
Updated:
Reimbursement of attorney’s fees when the attorneys are in-house
:
Updated:
The cartography of law departments – descriptions at different scales
:
Updated:
We simplify and humanize key ideas that are very complex and abstract
:
Updated:
Adhere to the same travel policies for both inside and outside counsel
:
Updated:
In-house lawyers burdened by technology through longer hours but like their work better
:
Updated:
The consulting niche of those who advise law department lawyers on how to lead and manage
:
Updated:
Agency theory part II: adverse selection and law departments
:
Updated:
Elements of agency theory that shed light on law department management
:
Updated:
Law departments and vendors in news releases by the department’s company
:
Updated:
Wikipedia needs material on law department management
:
Updated:
Maintain managerial (and staff) self control at holiday office parties
:
Updated:
Three areas of tension between IP lawyers and lawyers of other practice areas
:
Updated:
Some little known history about this blogger, who is one year older than I had thought
:
Updated:
Legal publications that regularly print articles that are useful for managers of law departments
:
Updated:
Some illuminating comments about lighting in law departments
:
Updated:
How training is delivered, at least in major consulting firms
:
Updated:
Hesitancy when lawyers are asked to complete an upward or 360 degree evaluation
:
Updated:
Try a blog within your law department
:
Updated:
Is there a widening disinclination in law departments to use consultants?
:
Updated:
As a law department grows, the people demands on its managers grow faster
:
Updated:
The squishiness of the seemingly straightforward metric of total legal spending in an industry
:
Updated:
A formula to calculate savings from rates frozen for a matter
:
Updated:
Thoughts about outside rates rising at twice the CPI
:
Updated:
One psychological explanation for the durability of billing by the hour
:
Updated:
A management decision: “Particular lawyers at a firm may not work on our matters”
:
Updated:
Coffee – grounds for insights about law departments
:
Updated:
Due diligence by law firms before they propose on future work
:
Updated:
The inevitability that your department will lose some talented lawyers
:
Updated:
Challenger firms face a high cost barrier to usurp an incumbent law firm
:
Updated:
Outstanding article on innovation in services, insightful for law departments and their firms
:
Updated:
Clause libraries for your commonly-used contracts
:
Updated:
Style guides for your contract templates
:
Updated:
Artwork in law departments
:
Updated:
Consider freezing billing rates for the duration of a matter
:
Updated:
A definition of culture for law departments
:
Updated:
A calculation of savings from a competitive bid
:
Updated:
In-house counsel in New Jersey can hold limited or plenary licenses to practice law in that state
:
Updated:
Lawyers inside have much less staff support than do lawyers in private firms
:
Updated:
Matching subsequent blog posts to my article on the firing of law firms – artiblog #3
:
Updated:
Four analogous techniques: off-shore, contract, regional, and temporary lawyers
:
Updated:
The risk premium for fixed fees should be counterbalanced by a potential performance premium
:
Updated:
The profusion and prolixity of outside counsel guidelines
:
Updated:
Are you one of your primary firms’ top 50 percent clients?
:
Updated:
Offshoring over-pouring on this blog
:
Updated:
We all lose when we compete for someone’s attention against a Blackberry
:
Updated:
A clear statement on diversity: make it a direct economic issue for primary law firms
:
Updated:
Observations about the seven global law firms with the most revenue in 2007
:
Updated:
Rees Morrison’s Morsels # 59 – additions to earlier posts
:
Updated:
Endless debate over hire the firm or hire the lawyer
:
Updated:
Citations on this blog to the seven global law firms with the most revenue in 2007
:
Updated:
Sophisticated data warehouse installed by Pfizer’s law department
:
Updated:
One quote, three wrong attitudes about expectations for in-house counsel
:
Updated:
A herpetology game to highlight perils and opportunities for in-house lawyers
:
Updated:
US general counsel not on the Board, but usually onboard as Secretary
:
Updated:
More than half of UK general counsel want to be a board member
:
Updated:
Don’t use junior associates or delegate more work to junior associates. Which is it?
:
Updated:
Percentage of intellectual property (IP) work that is outsourced overseas by US law departments
:
Updated:
A potential cost of a trial – a shadow jury
:
Updated:
Which types of associates should law departments favor for recruitment?
:
Updated:
Evolutionary design and the future for in-house patent lawyers
:
Updated:
Knowledge management in DuPont’s legal department, with the EDGE
:
Updated:
Associates (assistants) in UK law firms and their desire to move in-house
:
Updated:
Management features of a large Russian legal department
:
Updated:
If you think that US partner rates are high….
:
Updated:
An entrepreneurial consequence of scale and skills in a law department
:
Updated:
Your odds of hiring law firm associates are not all equal
:
Updated:
How to make the most of the knowledge in your law department
:
Updated:
Recoveries from class-action settlements, but an appropriate role for a law department?
:
Updated:
It’s wrong for in-house counsel to disparage their clients
:
Updated:
What should a law department discuss with a law firm at the annual retrospective?
:
Updated:
Low paid lawyers at the world’s richest philanthropy
:
Updated:
The flexibility, always upward it seems, when billing arrangements fix the fee
:
Updated:
Fees of law firms based on the total dollar volume of a transaction
:
Updated:
Tips on how to retain counsel in a foreign country
:
Updated:
The most useful material on law departments captures actual practices with clear terms
:
Updated:
Some of the largest US legal departments, governmental and industry
:
Updated:
Law firms abjure fixed fees because of the magnitude of uncertainties, not because they don’t know their costs
:
Updated:
Ways in-house counsel have coped with increased complexity, volume and velocity
:
Updated:
Contracts and offshoring by Sapient
:
Updated:
What software used by law firms most directly helps law departments?
:
Updated:
What have been some innovative ideas in law department management?
:
Updated:
Some of the downsides of being in a small law department
:
Updated:
A dramatic clamp-down on rate increases at law firms
:
Updated:
Stability of benchmark metrics of staffing over nearly a decade and a half
:
Updated:
A mini-dictionary of the definitions proposed so far on this blog
:
Updated:
Circadian sensitivity – morning people and afternoon people in law departments
:
Updated:
Pride in this blog, a grand goal, but tempered by a realistic appraisal
:
Updated:
Little change in basic benchmark metrics over past 14 years
:
Updated:
More on multiple-choice questions in surveys of law departments
:
Updated:
Why does total legal spending decline as a percentage of revenue as companies grow larger?
:
Updated:
For some general counsel, law-department management ideas are not open source
:
Updated:
Companies don’t associate legal fees with corporate initiatives
:
Updated:
Part two of how-to posts on this blawg: 21 more
:
Updated:
Savings targets measured against P&L or on a cash basis? Both
:
Updated:
Four tips to help reduce stress if you are an in-house lawyer (think tennis ball)
:
Updated:
Rees Morrison Morsels: #56 – small additions to earlier posts
:
Updated:
Ten unproven techniques to reduce outside-counsel costs
:
Updated:
Three arguments for why the compliance function should not be the responsibility of the law department
:
Updated:
Project management software specifically for litigation: patent pending
:
Updated:
Law firms lower the boom on electronic invoicing
:
Updated:
Contradictory messages to lawyers about making mistakes
:
Updated:
Law departments ought to have some sympathy for law firms besieged by e-billing systems
:
Updated:
Purchase orders: do they PO law departments?
:
Updated:
Artiblog on law firm invoices and how to analyze them – my article updated from this blog
:
Updated:
Confusion of the issue: flexibility and responsiveness from part-time lawyers in law departments and at firms
:
Updated:
Posting open positions of the law department
:
Updated:
High-tech zeniths and low-tech nadirs of this blog
:
Updated:
Rees Morrison’s Morsels # 55 – additions to earlier posts
:
Updated:
Exempt and non-exempt employees in US law departments
:
Updated:
More articles published recently by Rees Morrison
:
Updated:
Family friendliness in law firms and whether it matters to law departments
:
Updated:
Law departments not always tough on mandatory use of e-billing systems
:
Updated:
Ten tips for how to do better on competitive selections of law firms
:
Updated:
Do law departments want the same things from law firms as law students want?
:
Updated:
Electronic invoice transmission (e-billing) and law firm complaints
:
Updated:
Trend toward fewer support staff per lawyer?
:
Updated:
Do law-firm brands influence in-house counsel who hire firms?
:
Updated:
Law departments are at least partially to blame if law firms don’t deliver value for their fees
:
Updated:
Fair use of ideas in law firm proposals
:
Updated:
A years-of-experience benchmark for law departments
:
Updated:
Four more tips for how to derail the email express rushing at you
:
Updated:
How many internal staff might an e-billing system require?
:
Updated:
Offshoring legal work to service providers in Israel
:
Updated:
Base annual base increases on demonstrated gains in productivity or expertise
:
Updated:
A work-in-process definition for law departments of “management tools”
:
Updated:
The seven ways work arrives for an in-house lawyer
:
Updated:
It’s hard enough to limit the rate of increase of outside-counsel spending, plus four methods ranked
:
Updated:
A collection of 23 posts in the “how-to” style
:
Updated:
Under what circumstances do law firms fire Fortune 500 clients?
:
Updated:
An inside advantage: no costs of malpractice premiums
:
Updated:
Artiblog on creativity – my article updated from this blog
:
Updated:
Sometimes it may be appropriate to ask law firms to bill on a daily or half-daily rate
:
Updated:
Much more time spent by general counsel (on virtually everything) in 2006 compared to 2005
:
Updated:
Fixed-fee deals oblige the law department to commit to certain levels of support
:
Updated:
Today’s pressures on in-house counsel: complexity, volume, velocity or all of the above?
:
Updated:
Coaches for how to conduct interviews of law firms and select them
:
Updated:
Many timekeepers per law firm used at a major financial institution
:
Updated:
A request for basic information before an actual matter arrives
:
Updated:
Lawyers fees compared to the value of those fees – a different perspective
:
Updated:
Sad moods tend to improve analytical thinking
:
Updated:
What fairy tales teach us about how to manage a law department
:
Updated:
Practice area metrics for litigators: a proposal for a combined, scaled descriptor
:
Updated:
Conflict waivers given in advance to law firms
:
Updated:
Might e-billing systems reduce fee-bill reductions?
:
Updated:
Keep track of billing arrangements with individual firms
:
Updated:
Comments on three law-department management points from ConocoPhillips
:
Updated:
The role of a deputy general counsel
:
Updated:
Culture in a law department may trump strategy
:
Updated:
A method to judge the quality of work product: collective, anonymous grading
:
Updated:
Invitation to provide useful data about LEDES, the leading e-billing standard format
:
Updated:
An argument against setting minimum experience requirements for associates
:
Updated:
Four points about surveys beyond methodology
:
Updated:
Law departments and shared or departmental ratings of law firms
:
Updated:
How much have the Fortune 500 top-10 law departments been written about on this blog?
:
Updated:
Alleged “best practices” for global legal departments
:
Updated:
Countries of the European Union that do not recognize the attorney-client privilege for in-house lawyers
:
Updated:
Online gaming worlds as a way to train in-house counsel about management
:
Updated:
The six fundamental concepts to improve law departments
:
Updated:
How to improve the effectiveness of meetings
:
Updated:
Rees Morrison’s Morsels # 54 – additions to earlier posts
:
Updated:
Vendor support other than training, upgrades and a help desk – newsletter, seminars, user groups
:
Updated:
What law firms can offer law departments beyond substantive legal expertise and manpower
:
Updated:
Leading publications that have been sources of information or ideas for this blog
:
Updated:
Network effects and law department management
:
Updated:
How to measure a law department’s investments in knowledge
:
Updated:
Should law departments run internal e-discovery groups?
:
Updated:
Policy at Dell to involve procurement on “higher spend relationships” with outside counsel
:
Updated:
UK law departments rank the weaknesses of the hourly billing model
:
Updated:
Proclaimed imbalance between law-firm fees and the value generated by those fees
:
Updated:
A few specifics about implementation of an e-billing system
:
Updated:
Several contexts for understanding leadership and decision making
:
Updated:
Client-service teams and practice groups of law firms, in the eyes of law departments
:
Updated:
Across-the-board measures should go by the boards
:
Updated:
Where changes in the law affect law-department management
:
Updated:
As ranked by UK law departments, strengths of the hourly billing model
:
Updated:
How should you respond if a survey asks you to disclose the law firms you use?
:
Updated:
“Michael Clayton,” the movie, as an ugly, depressing depiction of a general counsel
:
Updated:
A three-way approval process for invoices: lawyer, client and finance
:
Updated:
Requests for Discussion (RFD) and presentation of ideas by law firms
:
Updated:
Favor me with email examples of secondments in the US from a law firm to a law department!
:
Updated:
General counsel and “crisis management” for their company
:
Updated:
What does the term “compliance” mean? However defined, what is expected of the general counsel?
:
Updated:
Gender differences and law department management
:
Updated:
GCs would seek personal legal advice to protect them regarding legal counsel they give
:
Updated:
Arbitration clauses in retention agreements for disputes with outside counsel
:
Updated:
Ask for probabilities of scenarios to help decide bonuses
:
Updated:
A captive law firm, but not for an insurance company (Equity Group Investments)
:
Updated:
How to prepare a balanced scorecard
:
Updated:
Enterprise risk management (ERM): its breadth and the general counsel’s unclear role with it
:
Updated:
On-the-spot awards for superior performance
:
Updated:
Psychometric instruments and legal departments
:
Updated:
How to align your law department with your clients: eight suggestions
:
Updated:
How to alleviate job stress: six soothing susurrations
:
Updated:
Competitive-bid processes don’t work well where conflicts of interest abound
:
Updated:
How to handle your email deluge effectively: four more tips
:
Updated:
Responsibilities and structure of Red Hat’s legal department
:
Updated:
General counsels’ jobs often tied to the fortunes of their CEO
:
Updated:
A good idea for written annual reviews: no surprise criticisms
:
Updated:
Reluctance by in-house counsel to agree to success-bonus arrangements with a law firm
:
Updated:
An example of a law department structured around areas of expertise
:
Updated:
Concentrate for a moment on the concentration of time by law-firm timekeepers
:
Updated:
Innovation can be easier than execution, but less useful
:
Updated:
Time constraints and alternative fee arrangements
:
Updated:
Energy makes a huge difference in the productivity of a law department
:
Updated:
Intelligence improves if the environment (the law department) encourages it
:
Updated:
The considerable value to senior lawyers of long-term compensation
:
Updated:
Rees Morrison Morsels #55 — Modest additions to previous posts
:
Updated:
SWOT analyses that glide over the W[eaknesses]
:
Updated:
A cash incentive to your law firms to help reduce your costs, even if their revenue drops
:
Updated:
Some marketing efforts by law firms deemed ineffectual by law department managers
:
Updated:
Six more ways to benefit the most from a vendor’s demo of software
:
Updated:
Current thinking on currency conversion
:
Updated:
Ten-plus direct reports to the general counsel at Raytheon, and some comments
:
Updated:
Legal process offshoring – challenges to ethical rules, market confusion caused by recent entrants
:
Updated:
Update on the Texas General Counsel Forum, its membership and educational program
:
Updated:
Survey data on e-billing systems and their penetration of AMLAW 200 defies belief — comments
:
Updated:
A mentoring program that cuts across organizational boundaries
:
Updated:
Survey your legal department for ideas on integration of corporate and business unit lawyers
:
Updated:
Insurance protection against litigation
:
Updated:
Antiquarian books on law department management
:
Updated:
A narrow legal view or a more enlightened ethical view by in-house lawyers
:
Updated:
Ten bad practices among efforts to control outside counsel costs
:
Updated:
Four predictions for law department management – by Rees spelled backwards
:
Updated:
Margin of error and benchmark data
:
Updated:
New document-assembly blog for lawyer by veteran Eric Little
:
Updated:
The dance and trip of expectations when fee discounts are tied to future amounts of work
:
Updated:
Electronic-evidence data-discovery vendors (cottage industry)
:
Updated:
Big-company demand dropped for national or regional e-discovery counsel
:
Updated:
Fixed fees in litigation are rare, yet frequently preferred!
:
Updated:
Team members don’t fire themselves or their colleagues
:
Updated:
A lament from this blog host about reader silence – send me an e-mail
:
Updated:
Bizarre market share data from 2006 to 2007 on e-billing software
:
Updated:
Data on costs of discovery
:
Updated:
Seven tips for more effective RFPs by a law department
:
Updated:
Innovation with technology compared to automation
:
Updated:
The dirty secret about cost control: lawyers on the line don’t really want to do it
:
Updated:
Administrative assistants and paralegals as notary publics
:
Updated:
Host your own data servers to reduce litigation support costs
:
Updated:
The percentage of cases pending that lie dormant
:
Updated:
Purchase orders and law firm budgets
:
Updated:
Discounts for early payments of bills are infrequent
:
Updated:
E-billing software can spot abusive billing by the same lawyer across multiple matters
:
Updated:
Average partner billing rates trend steadily higher as firm sizes increase
:
Updated:
Not all RFPs result in sales for vendors
:
Updated:
Market competition by itself creates savings even if you can’t prove the amount
:
Updated:
A plausible goal: one quarter of your spending on outside counsel being non-hourly billing?
:
Updated:
Ruminations on a common metric about discovery costs (60% of litigation costs)
:
Updated:
Aggressive auditing of bills, by third parties or employees, is the wrong way to go
:
Updated:
Track and publicize your law department’s output to help convey its value
:
Updated:
Attorney-client privilege for in-house counsel, revisited
:
Updated:
Selection of counsel in foreign countries
:
Updated:
Two comments on paralegals: offshoring and ratios
:
Updated:
The tension inherent in budget setting with law firms
:
Updated:
Repetitious and banal material about law department management
:
Updated:
Exaggerated savings from electronic billing software
:
Updated:
Climate change and in-house counsel (Linda DiSantis, EthicsLINC)
:
Updated:
Three techniques for in-house counsel when they negotiate terms with outside counsel
:
Updated:
A client gatekeeper for bill review
:
Updated:
Bill review, inductive or deductive
:
Updated:
The un-remarked (and uncosted) maintenance demands of e-billing systems
:
Updated:
An improvement on bonus deliberations by a law department
:
Updated:
One use for the Uniform Task-Based Management System (UTBMS) – when contesting a bill
:
Updated:
Conduct a “premortem” at the start of a major project
:
Updated:
An in-house guide to e-discovery practices and resources
:
Updated:
Use retired lawyers from the department for part-time work
:
Updated:
Two ways to calculate the return on knowledge-management investments
:
Updated:
Banish the word “client” from the law department’s vocabulary
:
Updated:
A dispersed compliance function
:
Updated:
A 180-degree ethical assessment in a law department
:
Updated:
Learn your client’s business by doing it
:
Updated:
Invite a thoughtful general counsel to your all-lawyer conference
:
Updated:
Fee arrangements are secondary in cost control efforts
:
Updated:
Be wary of incentives to law firms that then drive their strategy
:
Updated:
How realistic is it to shorten litigation lifecycles as a cost-control technique?
:
Updated:
A fascinating idea, for your next retreat, to encourage people to meet others
:
Updated:
Infrequent instances of Six Sigma projects in law departments
:
Updated:
Observations from an ad by a legal services provider
:
Updated:
ROI-ling these posts
:
Updated:
Call users to learn the most about software
:
Updated:
More tips on vendor demonstrations of software
:
Updated:
Rees Morrison’s Morsels #53 – additions to earlier posts
:
Updated:
Holdbacks as an alternative fee arrangement
:
Updated:
Attempts at humor on this blog
:
Updated:
Policies on law firms billing during travel time
:
Updated:
Summaries of policies for common practices in law departments
:
Updated:
What is a probability-weighted sample for a survey?
:
Updated:
Alternative fees ought to target desired outcomes, and in proportion to their odds
:
Updated:
Whether to require e-billing only of your top-billing firms
:
Updated:
Agent-based computer models to peer through the mists of complexity
:
Updated:
With every successful in-house lawyer is a good secretary
:
Updated:
The tax consequences of million-dollar-plus salaries
:
Updated:
A structural difference seen through M&A work
:
Updated:
Rees Morrison’s Morsels #52 – additions to earlier posts
:
Updated:
Huge role for contract managers, whether lawyer or not
:
Updated:
The speaking circuit available for general counsel
:
Updated:
Biblical exegesis in furtherance of law department management
:
Updated:
A law department of four lawyers, all mothers with small children
:
Updated:
Client satisfaction: have lunch with your clients to learn and bond
:
Updated:
RFPs every three years to obtain discounted rates from firms
:
Updated:
Three questions to find low-value time-wasters in a law department
:
Updated:
Even tiny topics on this blog suggest more profound managerial implications
:
Updated:
Combine partners from two firms to create a powerful team
:
Updated:
Personality disorders among general counsel
:
Updated:
Contest for ideas on how to improve this blog!! Win one of my books – Part I
:
Updated:
A barebones, outside-counsel cost database in Excel
:
Updated:
Wetter to drip-drip training on technology or use the full-bucket-at-once method
:
Updated:
Patents, one area where law departments can influence their work load
:
Updated:
Referrals dominate as the means of identifying outside counsel beyond US borders
:
Updated:
Infrequent use of foreign law firms (excluding IP) by US law departments
:
Updated:
How to prove savings from a fixed-fee arrangement
:
Updated:
One objection to fixed-fee arrangements: a risk that quality of work may decline
:
Updated:
Thoughts on when a new general counsel should survey clients for satisfaction
:
Updated:
The clash between core-competency and full-service departments
:
Updated:
Surveys that may be biased because of the views of sponsors
:
Updated:
Thumbnail analyses of top performers by clients
:
Updated:
Invite to a competitive presentation only the associates who will work on a matter
:
Updated:
Doubtful that a quarter a typical in-house lawyer’s time is spent managing outside counsel
:
Updated:
When does a compliance review make sense?
:
Updated:
“Hire no jerks” as a goal for a law department, and permit no jerk behavior
:
Updated:
An example of a discount and success-based bonus in litigation
:
Updated:
A few more turns on the job-rotation dance floor
:
Updated:
Lawyers can create (or destroy) huge value for their company
:
Updated:
Six articles by Rees Morrison published in 2007
:
Updated:
Some management observations about New York City’s Office of Corporation Counsel
:
Updated:
Six tips for how to run faster, more productive meetings
:
Updated:
Beyond the traditional RFP to law firms
:
Updated:
Software that helps a law department empower clients yet clamps down on outside counsel costs
:
Updated:
Star-struck, or how do law departments handle high-potential (HiPo) lawyers
:
Updated:
Applications of the economist’s “rents” to law departments
:
Updated:
Ambient information as a goad to better practices in law departments
:
Updated:
Mandatory diversity quota imposed by Wal-Mart; possible legal backlash
:
Updated:
Human Capital Management Part VII – Learning Capacity
:
Updated:
The Burton Awards for five general counsel who are Legends in Law
:
Updated:
Risks if a general counsel manages departments unrelated to duties as lawyer
:
Updated:
Skip-level calls and meetings are the right of a general counsel, but watch out!
:
Updated:
How full is your fully-loaded cost?
:
Updated:
Stock option valuation: Black-Scholes compared to a lattice binomial method
:
Updated:
DataCert acquires Corprasoft – a competitor’s comment
:
Updated:
Timing is a challenge when crafting alternative fee arrangements
:
Updated:
Tell service providers who have competed for your business why they weren’t picked
:
Updated:
Productivity – your department can do more if you (and your clients) accept more legal risks
:
Updated:
Surveys that purport to show comparisons year to year need to disclose overlapping respondents
:
Updated:
To run it by the general counsel or to run with it: general counsel and decision empowerment
:
Updated:
Purchasing-power parity (PPP) and compensation of lawyers outside the home country
:
Updated:
The few, the brave, the in-house stalwarts
:
Updated:
Show me the money, say inventors, so some companies pay cash for patented ideas
:
Updated:
Rees Morrison’s Morsels #52 – additions to earlier posts
:
Updated:
The cost per hour of highly-paid general counsel and methods to value stock options
:
Updated:
Two drawbacks where lawyers are decentralized so they don’t report to the general counsel
:
Updated:
Very large firms compared to smaller firms: pros and cons for alternative billing
:
Updated:
Pilot programs, and one that has taken months for full rollout
:
Updated:
An instance of convergence and working together closely (literally)
:
Updated:
Minor factors in selecting outside counsel – practice areas, diversity and national reach
:
Updated:
Train your staff, and even your outside firms, on effective e-mail habits
:
Updated:
Two tricks to save costs of airline fares
:
Updated:
Creative solutions as grounds for selecting a firm
:
Updated:
Administrative obstacles to law firm partners when agreeing to alternative fee arrangements
:
Updated:
Too exalted and expansive a sense of the general counsel’s role
:
Updated:
Metrics that patent litigation managers should know
:
Updated:
The facts belie the claim that law firms ignore the cost of outside counsel services
:
Updated:
Partners in law firms are rich as Croesus – or is that what law department lawyers think?
:
Updated:
Whether law firms “pad their bills” and the trend in perceptions of that
:
Updated:
Different views on cost efforts of law firms, but methodological imperfections galore
:
Updated:
Why hasn’t the diversity Call to Action succeeded more?
:
Updated:
Cottage industry: legal research firms
:
Updated:
Diversity training needs to be done right or it can harm
:
Updated:
Engage your law department’s staff and they will produce more and stay longer
:
Updated:
Zero-based budgeting processes as a tool for law departments
:
Updated:
Conflicts of interest in law firms and law department concerns
:
Updated:
A book that ranks providers of “legal process outsourcing”
:
Updated:
Neuroscience and our propensity to think and speak in conclusions and generalities
:
Updated:
Not quite billions and billions written, but many posts on Big Mac
:
Updated:
Techniques at PNC to build awareness of patents and find out about potential technology patents
:
Updated:
Well-intentioned actions that ironically bring some form of punishment
:
Updated:
Views on priorities and adequacy of professional legal development training
:
Updated:
Affinity groups and a justification for non-male groups – new co-author Jane DiRenzo Pigott
:
Updated:
Where are the in-house lawyers among the “50 Most Influential Women Lawyers in America”?
:
Updated:
Ways to deal with two subordinates who clash with each other
:
Updated:
Rees Morrison’s Morsels #51 – additions to earlier posts
:
Updated:
Publicize within the law department the contributions that paralegals can make
:
Updated:
Host “Lunch & Learns” to train users on software
:
Updated:
Legal services agreements to handle litigation for stand-alone subsidiaries at Koch Industries
:
Updated:
Some of the ways in-house lawyers decide on priorities among the incoming work
:
Updated:
Mid-year reviews of personnel to make sure they are on track
:
Updated:
Consolidating work too much, in too few law firms, reduces quality
:
Updated:
The methodological Hydra of multi-choice questions on surveys
:
Updated:
Inexpensive activities from a planning team to boost morale, even during budget cuts
:
Updated:
Picking at metrics on bill-review time saved with a fixed-fee arrangement
:
Updated:
Shared services and solid line reporting at NCR
:
Updated:
Surveys should ask for more precise data than ranges
:
Updated:
Two-year intern program with Attorney Fellows [Partners Healthcare]
:
Updated:
One percent higher discount for every ten percent of a company’s legal work assigned to a law firm
:
Updated:
An impressive newsletter début from a service provider, CT Tymetrix
:
Updated:
The power of guidelines for when a law department lawyer should or may retain outside counsel
:
Updated:
More on correlations between leading metrics of law departments
:
Updated:
Six E’s for Evaluations of law firms
:
Updated:
Market capitalization and total legal spending
:
Updated:
A classic statement of why a company hires its first general counsel
:
Updated:
Human Capital Management Part VI – Workforce Optimization
:
Updated:
Narcissism and the arrival of younger lawyers who are unhumble gifts to their departments
:
Updated:
In-house counsel who are too-hard-at workaholics
:
Updated:
Further reflections on obstacles to improving outside counsel management
:
Updated:
Obstacles to improving outside counsel management: agreement and disagreement
:
Updated:
Managers and problems – four steps to solutions
:
Updated:
Formal training rolls off the back (or out of the mind)
:
Updated:
A test to see whether discounts on billing rates have saved money
:
Updated:
Pareto’s law as applied to timekeepers on a matter or for a client
:
Updated:
Timekeepers other than partners, associates and paralegals
:
Updated:
The pros and cons of published promotion criteria
:
Updated:
Job descriptions retard what is vital in a law department: change
:
Updated:
Expand the “surface area” of your department’s contacts with internal clients
:
Updated:
Ways in which innovations in law department management spread
:
Updated:
How innovation happens among managers of law departments
:
Updated:
The wide swath “intangible assets” cut in a law department, or Das Capital
:
Updated:
An astute question to ask about initiatives, strategic plans and prognostications
:
Updated:
Metrics on contracts handled
:
Updated:
Status reports enable clients to set priorities
:
Updated:
Few hires straight from law school, and fewer still rise to the top (McDonalds)
:
Updated:
Identification of high-potential lawyers may create problems
:
Updated:
The career-path quagmire – an intractable management burden?
:
Updated:
Practice groups and a commitment by lawyers to concentrate (Cadbury Schweppes)
:
Updated:
Depict and analyze legal services graphically by value, volume, and provider
:
Updated:
A professional conduct rule that may clog contract productivity
:
Updated:
Tuition reimbursement as a perquisite for in-house attorneys
:
Updated:
High attrition – blame the general counsel or the general counsel’s direct reports
:
Updated:
Cultural anthropologist could glean meaning from several symbols in law departments
:
Updated:
Circuit City promises prompt payment – can they do more?
:
Updated:
Less discipline with US law departments as to lists of preferred counsel overseas
:
Updated:
Networks of law firms, including regional ones in southeast Europe and Africa
:
Updated:
Why this sense of generalist lawyers inside and specialist lawyers outside?
:
Updated:
Three examples of document management systems
:
Updated:
The “no surprise” rule works in three directions
:
Updated:
Pay attention to the working style of your boss
:
Updated:
A general counsel is most at risk of termination when a new CEO comes from outside the company
:
Updated:
Why it’s so hard to keep people happy, including in-house lawyers
:
Updated:
Rees Morrison’s Morsels #50 – additions to earlier posts
:
Updated:
Belief nets: a cousin to decision trees but easier to understand
:
Updated:
Impossible to calculate return on knowledge-management investments
:
Updated:
Eleven examples of panels of selected law firms
:
Updated:
Dominance of British Magic Circle law firms among the posts on this blawg
:
Updated:
Eversheds appears from my posts to be creative and progressive in its relationships with corporate clients
:
Updated:
Rules-based software that can guide inside counsel: Proskauer’s FMLA/ADA system
:
Updated:
Data on flexible work arrangements in New York offices of signatory law departments
:
Updated:
A woeful claim about companies firing primary law firms, but I doubt it is true
:
Updated:
Document Review: the next e-discovery?
:
Updated:
Another massive decision to concentrate on one law firm (Linde)
:
Updated:
Why I have not added hyperlinks for my cross-references to posts within this blog
:
Updated:
Early case assessment
:
Updated:
Human Capital Management Part V – Knowledge Accessibility
:
Updated:
Co-GC arrangements – a dubious practice (CA)
:
Updated:
Survey questions should strive to be MECE (Mutually Exclusive and Collectively Exhaustive)
:
Updated:
Strategic changes forced upon a law department
:
Updated:
Strategic priorities compared to strategic plans
:
Updated:
A deeper look at Bayesian statistics in the context of law departments
:
Updated:
Six suggestions to make conference calls more effective
:
Updated:
Save money by relocating part of your legal team to a lower cost city
:
Updated:
Odds are against internal candidates if there is a search for a new general counsel
:
Updated:
More metrics on patent litigation and costs
:
Updated:
The power of PCs as energy wasters, and what law departments can do
:
Updated:
The seven mistakes law departments can make regarding performance metrics
:
Updated:
Three of top ten risks to organizations are legal
:
Updated:
Prompt payment discounts with two twists – full review and end-of-year larger discount
:
Updated:
Men and women have different preferences for how power is distributed within groups
:
Updated:
Law departments and favorable publicity
:
Updated:
Human Capital Management Part IV – Employee Engagement
:
Updated:
A law-department urban legend — the metric that calculates the cost of legal failure
:
Updated:
How neuroscience explains the attraction of name-brand law firms
:
Updated:
A trove of US data on recent IP litigation numbers and costs
:
Updated:
Rees Morrison’s Morsels #49 – humble additions to previous posts
:
Updated:
Contest after contest to rate law departments on their achievements
:
Updated:
Accounting complexities with e-billing fees paid for by firms
:
Updated:
A better way for surveys to ask respondents to rank elements of a set
:
Updated:
Human Capital Management Part III – Leadership Practices
:
Updated:
Management stands low on rankings of law departments of activities; three proxy indicators
:
Updated:
Number of new matters sent to outside counsel is a dubious benchmark
:
Updated:
Codes of conduct for law departments?
:
Updated:
Various comments from an IP litigation partner about law department behavior
:
Updated:
What we notice about management “facts” depends, somehow and at some level, on theory
:
Updated:
Work/life balance principles (Northwestern Mutual)
:
Updated:
Definitions of flextime and compressed time (UNIFI)
:
Updated:
Other than word processing and email, the software used most frequently in law departments – shared drives
:
Updated:
Distribution of training methods in a law department
:
Updated:
Superior lawyers, much smarter than the drones in-house, bear up under greater pressure
:
Updated:
Law grads in the UK pass over law departments
:
Updated:
The alleged “dismal failure” of panels to cut outside counsel costs, and other condemnations
:
Updated:
General counsel who commute to their office by plane
:
Updated:
The larger the law department, the larger the law firms that receive the most payments?
:
Updated:
General counsel use at least 12 of 25 popular business management tools
:
Updated:
Daily rates for outside lawyers are not an effective technique for law departments
:
Updated:
Rules-based guidance through software developed by a law firm
:
Updated:
A law department’s role (or not) as to managing corporate policy statements
:
Updated:
Shortcomings of the annual work appraisal
:
Updated:
Architecture, aesthetics and law-department office layouts
:
Updated:
No law department avoids the undertow of “office politics”
:
Updated:
Knowledge management directors in law departments
:
Updated:
Specialized software for I-9 compliance, but not a law department responsibility
:
Updated:
Unjustified anti-consultant sentiment from InsideCounsel
:
Updated:
Rees Morrison’s Morsels #48 – modest additions to previous posts
:
Updated:
Humble title, slow growth, and few lawyers for its market cap (Rio Tinto)
:
Updated:
Illusive meanings to key management concepts – leadership, culture, competencies and clients
:
Updated:
How often does a General Counsel talk directly to the CEO?
:
Updated:
Use the Five Percent Trimmed Mean to give a more representative description of data
:
Updated:
General counsel in advertisements for law firms or service providers
:
Updated:
Recruitment rewards offered by law departments
:
Updated:
A law firm’s online TV feed helps law departments train clients in employment law issues
:
Updated:
Five crucial enablers for effective processes
:
Updated:
Human Capital Management by means of investments in 23 important practices – Part II
:
Updated:
Six Sigma control charts and variances in a legal process – is this for real?
:
Updated:
Five suggestions for how to respond if a headhunter calls
:
Updated:
Wal-Mart “may also be the most diverse in-house law department in corporate America”
:
Updated:
Law-department management issues transcend national boundaries
:
Updated:
Growing your own talent is cheaper and more effective than recruiting from outside
:
Updated:
Some general counsel with scattered lawyer sites travel frequently
:
Updated:
To tell or not to tell internal candidates about their prospects for promotion to an available general counsel opening
:
Updated:
Zipf’s Law as it might apply to the top law firms in a specialty area
:
Updated:
A wholesale repotting of in-house lawyers (Royal Dutch Shell)
:
Updated:
Old, and possibly biased, data from an arbitration organization
:
Updated:
Fuel on the firing discussion and a methodological uncertainty
:
Updated:
General counsel in advertisements for law firms or service providers
:
Updated:
Considerations of Canadian in-house lawyers when choosing outside counsel
:
Updated:
Topology to depict the distribution of management initiatives among law departments
:
Updated:
Few lawsuits faced by Canadian law departments
:
Updated:
Do profits per equity partner factor in to the decisions of law departments about what firm to hire or on what terms?
:
Updated:
Term periods for fixed fees, panels, and discounted rates: typically 12-24 months
:
Updated:
To reduce spending on outside counsel, shift work, don’t impose techniques
:
Updated:
Three observations about the law department of Mellon Financial Corp.
:
Updated:
Build a law department and cut outside counsel fees in half (Glatfelter)
:
Updated:
Estimated 6 percent savings from drastic convergence (Allstate), but some questions
:
Updated:
Law department productivity as measured by total legal spending to revenue
:
Updated:
Market capitalization as a denominator for many law-department benchmarks?
:
Updated:
The good sides of joining a corporate legal department as compared to a law firm
:
Updated:
Rees Morrison Morsels #47 – small additions to previous posts
:
Updated:
Fears of in-house counsel that they are “losing touch with the practice of law”
:
Updated:
Average weekly hours logged by in-house lawyers
:
Updated:
Big companies pay their general counsel more, but the general counsel are probably more experienced
:
Updated:
Use outside counsel to provide CLE training, and save money (Allstate)
:
Updated:
Sharing summer associates with a law firm (Accenture and DLA Piper)
:
Updated:
An eleven-person law department technology team (General Electric)
:
Updated:
Dormancy months of litigation and law department goals of reducing cycle time
:
Updated:
Blended rates and some rumination on how they can be decided
:
Updated:
Blended rates and a test to see whether they encourage more efficient staffing
:
Updated:
Rees Morrison Morsels #46 – small additions to previous posts
:
Updated:
The two sides of awarding in-house lawyers bonuses based on business unit performance
:
Updated:
A law firm’s reputation makes a difference, but it must awe and sway senior executives
:
Updated:
Patents are strategically invaluable, yet their prosecution is often a tactical commodity under fixed fees
:
Updated:
Profit per lawyer may be an under-appreciated benchmark metric
:
Updated:
He ain’t heavy, he’s not bothersome — interesting legal work and perceptions of workload
:
Updated:
Exogenous factors: Supreme Court decision on patents, and patents on legal strategies
:
Updated:
Gifts from law departments to their members and friends
:
Updated:
Policies of law departments regarding law firms and matter budgets
:
Updated:
Recent articles by Rees Morrison – latter part of 2006-07
:
Updated:
Publicity about the law department may ruffle senior executives’ feathers
:
Updated:
Three ways to set caps on fees of law firms
:
Updated:
A funding alternative for law-firm disbursements, with possible savings
:
Updated:
Differences between a competitive bid process and an auction
:
Updated:
C.P. Snow’s two cultures; tension between management of processes and of people
:
Updated:
Income and intelligence: profits per partner shouldn’t cause in-house insecurity
:
Updated:
For each of your primary law firms, assign an in-house lawyer to be the relationship manager
:
Updated:
Small law departments hire differently
:
Updated:
Very hard to poach from other law departments in a specialized industry
:
Updated:
Vacation days granted to and taken by in-house counsel
:
Updated:
Troublesome specters regarding cost-reduction obligations of legal departments
:
Updated:
Long-term cost reductions through personnel management
:
Updated:
Find delegable tasks for non-lawyer members of the department
:
Updated:
Create an index of change from a consistent baseline for practice area metrics
:
Updated:
Law departments and the assumed capacity of their law firms to absorb more work
:
Updated:
Misguided goal embedded in the oft-used phrase “world-class legal organization”
:
Updated:
A multi-disciplinary view of law department management
:
Updated:
Findings from a 2006 study of French law departments: size and complicated educations
:
Updated:
The immensity of electronic documents, or why law departments have aggressively tackled e-discovery
:
Updated:
Let me know: are cross references and metaposts useful to readers?
:
Updated:
Microsoft’s patent portfolio, patent litigation and spending
:
Updated:
Forces that may slow or reverse the lock-in that converged firms presumably enjoy
:
Updated:
A plausible goal: 80 percent of all work to the selected panel of firms?
:
Updated:
Subtle advantages of a geographically decentralized law department
:
Updated:
RR Donnelley gets involved
:
Updated:
Cottage industry: writing instructors who have trained in-house counsel
:
Updated:
League of Minnesota Cities offers insurance for litigation over zoning and city-services
:
Updated:
Guidelines for outsourcing
:
Updated:
Human Capital Management by means of investments in 23 important practices
:
Updated:
A tough message from law departments regarding inexperienced law-firm associates
:
Updated:
DataCert acquires Corprasoft
:
Updated:
A merger, rapid growth of a small law department; and a questionable philosophy of work allocation (Clayton Holdings)
:
Updated:
Relative ranking of the services a law department should deliver
:
Updated:
Low numbers of responses to the many RFPs issued in 2006, and a reason
:
Updated:
Increased activity of procurement (sourcing) with regard to legal spending
:
Updated:
Estimated savings on services provided by law firms on a fixed fee: up to 15% (Pitney Bowes)
:
Updated:
A single firm for all trans-European benefits and HR work (Northrop Grumman)
:
Updated:
Top priorities in 2005 for European in-house teams
:
Updated:
Data on international arbitrations but a biased conclusion
:
Updated:
Duplicate payments of law firm invoices
:
Updated:
Rees Morrison Morsels #45 –additions to previous posts
:
Updated:
Cottage industry: third parties who answer calls on Ethics lines (McKesson)
:
Updated:
Reasons why French law departments change law firms (hint: same as US departments)
:
Updated:
Lawsuit climate 2007
:
Updated:
On what basis might one bestow the description, the “toughest GC position in the US”?
:
Updated:
How much of a risk is there that in-house lawyers intimidate the non-lawyers they counsel?
:
Updated:
“It’s cheaper to lose 20 percent of the cases than it is to settle them all.” (Ford Motor)
:
Updated:
The law department industry needs alpha and beta figures for outside counsel rate increases
:
Updated:
European titles for the general counsel or chief legal officer
:
Updated:
A multi-faceted initiative to reduce the number of lawsuits pending (Holcim US)
:
Updated:
Prodigious return on investment claimed for a law department (Holcim US)
:
Updated:
International arbitration is often more expensive than litigation
:
Updated:
General Counsel don’t hire a law firm because of the firm’s “prestige”
:
Updated:
Individual offices of in-house counsel may be shrinking, plus file, don’t pile
:
Updated:
An attack on blawgs by a magazine publisher, and a reply
:
Updated:
In-house legal counsel at two-year community colleges
:
Updated:
(Not) using technology to cut legal costs?
:
Updated:
A day of legal workshops for high school students, and teaching classes (Marriott Vacation Club)
:
Updated:
How often do law departments encounter HR resistance when they want to use a search firm?
:
Updated:
Secular trends that cut against convergence of law firms
:
Updated:
Contract enforcement insurance
:
Updated:
Temporary offices for some short-term needs of law departments
:
Updated:
An unfair question in an RFP: list strong competitors
:
Updated:
NDAs and confidentiality agreements preserve the secrecy of US RFPs
:
Updated:
RFPs: Format requirements can be inside or outside the bun
:
Updated:
Rees Morrison Morsels #44 – small additions to previous posts
:
Updated:
Oddities of general counsel and other in-house lawyers’ careers
:
Updated:
Using technology to optimize document review
:
Updated:
Alternative fees vs. electronic billing
:
Updated:
Full-time equivalent (FTE) – an important term and concept
:
Updated:
Major stresses and strains after being promoted to a leadership role
:
Updated:
Ask your key law firms to invest time in learning about your business
:
Updated:
Upward evaluations of the general counsel
:
Updated:
Software interests law departments and law firms almost equally
:
Updated:
How to define strength of relationship between firm and department
:
Updated:
Four generations of knowledge management efforts
:
Updated:
Law departments should encourage law firms to conserve and recycle
:
Updated:
Outsourcing does not equal offshoring
:
Updated:
What’s the best mix of compensation elements to elicit top performance?
:
Updated:
The undiminished value of outside counsel’s proximity
:
Updated:
The success of cross-selling depends on a department’s view of a law firm as a whole
:
Updated:
For any given management initiative, a four-part description
:
Updated:
Possible misinterpretation of data on mid-size European companies and their law departments
:
Updated:
Resources to help a law department find an expert witness
:
Updated:
Some law departments have large numbers of lawyers based in different countries
:
Updated:
A huge company and three drastic convergences to single firms (Tyco)
:
Updated:
Metrics of an active law department that has grown significantly and accomplished much
:
Updated:
A collective effort to update the codes of the Uniform Task-Based Management System
:
Updated:
Purchase power parity and some possible glitches when you consider lawyer compensation
:
Updated:
A baker’s dozen comments on statistics for law departments (employment discrimination)
:
Updated:
Compliance software for the Corporate Secretary – two additional capabilities
:
Updated:
Meetings bulk large; job satisfaction and suggestions for improvement
:
Updated:
Protection for e-billing data with a hosted provider yet much of the information behind the firewall
:
Updated:
Details about payments of invoices from outside the US: taxes, data privacy, and adjustments
:
Updated:
A costs-and-results distribution for wrongful-termination lawsuits
:
Updated:
Is it useful for litigation managers to compare the percentage of dormancy months?
:
Updated:
Pro bono contributions as a department or on an individual lawyer basis
:
Updated:
Standardizing legal work is not the optimal goal
:
Updated:
“Tools” defined and as used in this blog, by category
:
Updated:
Town hall meetings, where it’s hard it is to get department members to ask genuine questions
:
Updated:
At least thirty-five locations of in-house counsel for one law department (Johnson & Johnson)
:
Updated:
Additional resources for law departments interested in document assembly
:
Updated:
Huge volume of bills audited by third-party bill reviewer
:
Updated:
How many in-house counsel can benefit from a nearby corporate health center?
:
Updated:
Dreyer’s always uses ADR devices because disputes grow and metastasize unnecessarily
:
Updated:
Thoughts on quantifying “return on talent” by use of a talent index
:
Updated:
Benchmark data compares relative performance, which counts for more than absolute performance
:
Updated:
Carrying alignment to an extreme – no diplomas on walls and no lawyer titles
:
Updated:
From GE’s competition for its US panel: fewer firms, no auction, four-year terms, and mid-point fee reductions
:
Updated:
Loss of talent or engagement sometimes when a general counsel is promoted
:
Updated:
One view by outside counsel of the sad situation inside
:
Updated:
What information should law departments be concerned about disclosing?
:
Updated:
Collective action on legal fees charged by firms
:
Updated:
Client satisfaction surveys: frequency, source of clients, questions and use (Johnson & Johnson)
:
Updated:
Five key responsibilities of a compliance/ethics officer, and reporting lines
:
Updated:
There’s only so much a general counsel can do to cheer up the troops
:
Updated:
An in-house lawyer in Georgia can get a hold-harmless agreement against internal malpractice
:
Updated:
An officer title may jeopardize the attorney-client privilege if an in-house lawyer signs a contract
:
Updated:
When you talk with clients, LIE! (Listen, identify, and enhance)
:
Updated:
Rees Morrison Morsels #42 – Add-ons to previous posts
:
Updated:
The devil encourages the halo effect
:
Updated:
What is the difference between KPI’s and performance metrics and dashboards?
:
Updated:
11 percent average savings on outside counsel from matter management system???
:
Updated:
To whom should the corporate secretary report?
:
Updated:
Why there might be differences in the compensation of lawyers among highly-paid practice areas
:
Updated:
Law firms help law departments develop rule-based drafting systems
:
Updated:
For law departments, to deliver value is not the same as to demonstrate you deliver value
:
Updated:
Criteria for attorney bonuses: individual and company performance, but what about departmental?
:
Updated:
Smaller law firms are more receptive to alternative fee arrangements?
:
Updated:
Publicly-traded law firms and the marketing value to law departments
:
Updated:
First university patent department: University of Virginia’s
:
Updated:
Blunting the Hackett hatchet
:
Updated:
Workers’ comp and intervention by a law department (McDonald’s)
:
Updated:
Crowdhacking as one reason why collective online assessments of law firms won’t succeed
:
Updated:
A resource for law departments that seek minority outside counsel – the National Minority Law Group (NMLG)
:
Updated:
Mighty talk about the clout of a general counsel, but business lawyers didn’t report to him (General Electric)
:
Updated:
A pole-vault bar for how much corporate lawyers should know about the business
:
Updated:
A blind and brave general counsel (Jim Shore, Florida Seminoles)
:
Updated:
How much knowledge of the company should law departments expect (for free) from firms?
:
Updated:
The “general counsel” of a division or subsidiary doesn’t deal with some of a company’s toughest legal issues
:
Updated:
Diagnosis momentum lurks for both doctors and managers of legal departments
:
Updated:
Document assembly choices for law departments
:
Updated:
Cognitive dissonance as a distortion to clear thinking
:
Updated:
Here’s the surefire method to find the right firm for the right issue
:
Updated:
When to stop a management mandate, and some examples
:
Updated:
Straight from clerking for a Supreme Court Justice to General Counsel
:
Updated:
Law-focused portals and their usefulness to in-house counsel
:
Updated:
What futurists can tell general counsel who want to plan further down the road
:
Updated:
Leaders should be adept at strategic thinking and developing the lawyers who report to them
:
Updated:
Talk to clients, don’t write to them – especially status memos
:
Updated:
Road blocks that prevent law departments from becoming more closely aligned with business units
:
Updated:
Software principally or only used by law departments
:
Updated:
Services that are excluded from the coverage of an RFP process
:
Updated:
An example of the value of matter management data to show productivity
:
Updated:
Request for Legal Services forms – pros but mostly cons
:
Updated:
A complement to law firm updates and legal advice
:
Updated:
Online, confidential and low-cost surveys to take the pulse of a law department
:
Updated:
It takes about five months, on average, to fill an in-house attorney position
:
Updated:
Methods to find qualified applicants for in-house positions
:
Updated:
Preferences of law departments for sources of new hires
:
Updated:
Organic growth, mostly, by US law departments not surprising
:
Updated:
Three ideas to encourage more useful take-aways from a retreat
:
Updated:
What law department managers can do with statistics
:
Updated:
When the top lawyer reports to a lawyer
:
Updated:
Family-friendly law firms and law departments
:
Updated:
Paralegal certifications vary, but training ought to be continually pursued
:
Updated:
General counsel probably value being asked by law firms about their views on the firm
:
Updated:
Law departments encounter issues with law firms that grow by merger
:
Updated:
Double web sites – one for clients and one for the law department alone (Honeywell)
:
Updated:
Once more on the pros and cons of tracking internal time and charging it back to clients
:
Updated:
An e-discovery practice group and its savings after vendor rationalization
:
Updated:
Advances in machine translation may reduce law department costs
:
Updated:
Statistical moments to describe sets of data – explained with invoices
:
Updated:
Drawbacks to outsourcing subjective document review projects to India
:
Updated:
The probability of communication among lawyers declines rapidly as their offices are farther apart
:
Updated:
Employee satisfaction declines over all measures with open plan offices
:
Updated:
An overview of the structure of Raytheon’s office of General Counsel
:
Updated:
Six roles of the general counsel
:
Updated:
Records management myths of note – III and IV (by George Cunningham)
:
Updated:
Records management myths of note – I and II (by George Cunningham)
:
Updated:
Rees Morrison Morsels #41 – topping off earlier posts
:
Updated:
Regression and cluster analysis of scores; the important features of talent management
:
Updated:
Do law firms, busy and profitable, stand strong and reject alternative billing arrangements?
:
Updated:
False positives and false negatives for clients and their law departments
:
Updated:
There is always a price to clients for going to the law department for advice and counsel
:
Updated:
How statistics, if drawn from a selective pool of data, can mislead managers
:
Updated:
Cottage industry: economic analysis for cases and experts to testify about it
:
Updated:
From boring commodity through comfort zone to scary, novel and risky situations
:
Updated:
How to identify pockets of non-users of your law department
:
Updated:
The importance of accounting knowledge to in-house counsel
:
Updated:
Teleconferences during a competitive bid process
:
Updated:
Characteristics of three general counsel as bad managers
:
Updated:
Commodity legal work is, nonetheless, that which is most important to the business
:
Updated:
A virtual law library that also generates knowledge more readily available to lawyers
:
Updated:
Twelve obstacles in law departments to the successful implementation of a strategy
:
Updated:
Why aren’t most mission statements of legal groups virtually identical?
:
Updated:
Circumstances where law departments would be mostly likely to end a relationship with a firm
:
Updated:
A massive, global, and thoroughly decentralized legal team (HSBC)
:
Updated:
A way to avoid executive search fees; publicly announce your high-level opening
:
Updated:
Create an internal “market” where members of the department can trade on outcomes
:
Updated:
Arithmetic and beyond: some terminology and definitions for what managers can quantify
:
Updated:
Your RFP and the effort set in motion for the recipient law firms
:
Updated:
Disadvantages of having single points of contact for business units
:
Updated:
Eight communities of practice in one law department (Lucent Technologies)
:
Updated:
Rumors of the death of law department newsletters may be premature
:
Updated:
Place mini-law intranet sites on the sites of your internal business clients
:
Updated:
Eleven law firms accounted for 75 percent of the median company’s outside counsel costs
:
Updated:
Much international work can be handled by US firms from their international offices
:
Updated:
Broad, essay questions as part of a competitive RFP process for legal services
:
Updated:
You can’t remove subjectivity from the RFP review process
:
Updated:
A complex issue to define complexity of a given lawsuit or matter
:
Updated:
Unusual structure where law firm lawyer is corporate secretary (EMC Corp.)
:
Updated:
In-house lawyers do well to shadow internal clients, listen to quarterly earnings calls
:
Updated:
Joint venture material for client self-service
:
Updated:
Contract lawyers and their marked-up costs – the debate goes on
:
Updated:
Potential of social network software for law departments and communities of practice
:
Updated:
Few examples of where law firms change how they operate when they land a fixed-fee arrangement
:
Updated:
Loyalty to law firms eroded by increased lateral mobility of partners
:
Updated:
Management initiatives compared to processes in law departments
:
Updated:
Some law departments are requiring that hourly rates be held constant for more than one year
:
Updated:
Billable hour requirements for at law firms for paralegals
:
Updated:
Supplement corporate-mandated budgets with a series of rolling forecasts
:
Updated:
Best to evaluate the effectiveness of training or off-sites several months later
:
Updated:
Half of all corporate law departments are leaving money on the table
:
Updated:
If lawyers at firms use paralegals too little, costs go up
:
Updated:
Law department access, directly, to the knowledge management material of law firms
:
Updated:
“The price of [legal] information is being driven toward its marginal cost of production.”
:
Updated:
Rees Morrison Morsels #40 – modest additions to previous posts
:
Updated:
Competitive bid processes should be receptive to joint bids by multiple law firms
:
Updated:
Large law departments should consider getting accreditation for CLE courses they offer
:
Updated:
Modest penetration of e-billing and modest requirements of firms to comply
:
Updated:
The precarious hold of one’s primary law firm — perhaps
:
Updated:
Concept searching: semantic and linguistic approaches
:
Updated:
Thoughts on portfolios in law department management
:
Updated:
An initiative pyramid as a way to think about operational improvements in law departments
:
Updated:
The case of the unusual general counsel compensation (UST Inc.)
:
Updated:
An example of savings from the use of contract professionals
:
Updated:
Classify paralegals as professionals, not administrative staff, so you can pay for appropriate quality
:
Updated:
Fixed fees for roughly two-thirds of Coachmen’s legal work, assigned to two firms
:
Updated:
Virtual teams of law firms, aka split engagements
:
Updated:
Don’t scrutinize disbursements as closely as hourly fees
:
Updated:
What Technorati says about this blog
:
Updated:
E-discovery consolidation: Merrill buys LextraNet
:
Updated:
What pages rank highest on visits to this site (Blog Idol, anyone?)
:
Updated:
Different rates of departure by lawyers, split by high and low performance assessments
:
Updated:
Fifteen years later, do the Reebok Rules still rule?
:
Updated:
WellPoint general counsel promoted to CEO, the only woman CEO of US’s 50 largest companies
:
Updated:
Compartmentalized legal work raises legal risks
:
Updated:
Rees Morrison Morsels #39 – additions to previous posts
:
Updated:
The volatile mixture of legal and business advice by in-house counsel – some metrics
:
Updated:
Budgets from law firms and what to do if the firm exceeds its budget – “bank” it
:
Updated:
Boards of directors should select and decide compensation of general counsel (!)
:
Updated:
Quaff deeply from these pints about SABMiller’s new GC (practiced law, decentralized, and secondment)
:
Updated:
A scholarly overview of the roles of general counsel
:
Updated:
An elaborate rating system to evaluate the performance of outside counsel (Caterpillar)
:
Updated:
Pro bono commitment at Exelon, a standard to aspire to
:
Updated:
Three points of note about Pfizer’s lawyer-led e-discovery team
:
Updated:
Roll-your-own methods to obtain knowledgeable lawyers in a specialty area
:
Updated:
Two techniques to bring new law firms up to speed with your company
:
Updated:
More providers in India of law-related services
:
Updated:
Knowledge preservation through video recordings
:
Updated:
A one-size-fits-all mission statement
:
Updated:
Rees Morrison Morsels #39: Additions to earlier posts
:
Updated:
The problem with the belief that more money will result in better work
:
Updated:
Should the general counsel oversee intellectual property activities?
:
Updated:
The technology behind service providers: three schools of thought
:
Updated:
Cottage industry: document assembly consultants in the legal sphere
:
Updated:
Six drivers of law firm profitability, but law departments can steer the wheel
:
Updated:
Declarative and procedural knowledge
:
Updated:
Standardized formats for bills from law firms
:
Updated:
The misconception for in-house lawyers of the “extrinsic incentives bias”
:
Updated:
Two philosophical points – the under-determination thesis and the theory/fact dichotomy
:
Updated:
Data from law firms on e-billing vexations
:
Updated:
A retrospective on my second year as a blawg author (2nd anniversary of this blog)
:
Updated:
Think hard for a while, and then fall asleep to make a good decision
:
Updated:
To invest in associates is to suffer from the high attrition rates of law firms
:
Updated:
Hold-backs on budget overages
:
Updated:
Rees Morrison Morsels #38: Additions to earlier posts
:
Updated:
Mandatory engagement letters under New York State Bar rules
:
Updated:
Getting more value from pilot projects and understanding their limitations
:
Updated:
First monthly summary of posts sent to GoogleGroup subscribers – sign up today!
:
Updated:
Hackman and Oldham’s Job Diagnostic Survey (JDS) – a free way to assess job satisfaction
:
Updated:
Litigation support software and law department mandates to use particular packages
:
Updated:
Back on the firing line again – law departments that “fire” law firms
:
Updated:
Standard deviations as measures of volatility (law department spending)
:
Updated:
Advice for law firms on marketing is good advice for other legal service providers
:
Updated:
For law departments, does “data mining” mean anything other than analyzing data?
:
Updated:
A (mis-)step beyond lawyers per 1,000 employees
:
Updated:
Consider all-in costs of a vendor’s solution
:
Updated:
Estimates of time it takes to find new outside counsel, without personal references
:
Updated:
Willingness to budget as an indicator of firm experience
:
Updated:
A tribe of chief officers: legal, corporate secretary, compliance, governance and corporate responsibility
:
Updated:
Cost-effective use of local counsel by national counsel must comply with local ethics rules
:
Updated:
Another bar association approves offshore legal services, with caveats (Assoc. of Bar of the City of NY)
:
Updated:
Metrics on the split between general counsel and corporate secretary roles
:
Updated:
Five benefits of knowledge networks for the law department industry
:
Updated:
An in-house group focused on e-discovery management
:
Updated:
Five fundamentals about records management
:
Updated:
Introducing a contributing co-author: George Cunningham on records management
:
Updated:
Impossible to test alternative fee arrangements in advance
:
Updated:
Data about frequency of corporate secretary, governance and compliance positions
:
Updated:
An attempt to quantify the added value of knowledge of the business
:
Updated:
A straightforward way to encourage consciousness of diversity (Shell and Visa)
:
Updated:
More ROI than you think from products and services
:
Updated:
Introducing a contributing author: Brad Blickstein on legal service providers
:
Updated:
Job rotations (cubed) as an inducement for lawyers to join (Philips)
:
Updated:
The paradox of cerebral lawyers but suppressed creativity
:
Updated:
One-third of law firms markup contract attorneys more than 200 percent!
:
Updated:
A good example of grooming a general counsel with business experience (TransCanada)
:
Updated:
Perceptions are reality
:
Updated:
Maslow’s satisfiers and hygiene factors – a primer for general counsel
:
Updated:
Pros and cons of guaranteeing a law firm a certain amount of work
:
Updated:
A questionable law department as a profit center (SAP Canada)
:
Updated:
The Corporate E-Discovery Forum and efforts to gain control of costs, risks and efforts
:
Updated:
Difficulties in hiring lawyers and contract staff as an alternative (Petro-Canada)
:
Updated:
A discovery recommendation based on lawsuits that seek the same data
:
Updated:
Are law firms negotiating back-end rebates from airlines but not passing them through?
:
Updated:
Disbursements of firms at about 10 percent of fees (data from large consulting firms)
:
Updated:
Cottage industry: vendors of corporate secretarial software and services
:
Updated:
Steady growth of the Canadian in-house sector, 1981-2006
:
Updated:
Direct billings to the law department by vendors who serve a law firm
:
Updated:
Survey data on law department software that boosted productivity
:
Updated:
Scarceness of “new or noteworthy initiatives implemented by your outside firms”
:
Updated:
Reasons for firing a law firm
:
Updated:
Update post on Open Legal Standards Initiative and it Top 25 Key Performance Indicators
:
Updated:
In smaller departments, about three law firms hired regularly per in-house lawyer?
:
Updated:
Pro bono involvement compared to public service efforts
:
Updated:
Represent data broken out by components with a cascading column chart
:
Updated:
The most common attributes asked about on client satisfaction surveys
:
Updated:
The challenges for law departments of multiple account payable systems
:
Updated:
In law department management, what is strategic and what is tactical?
:
Updated:
Maybe what’s missing inside in terms of effective control of outside costs is negotiation skills
:
Updated:
Rees Morrison Morsels #38 Brief Supplements to Previous Posts
:
Updated:
Constraints general counsel operate under
:
Updated:
Ambivalences about industry experience and client popularity
:
Updated:
Cottage industry: arbitration and mediation firms (ADR)
:
Updated:
A swing toward mediation over arbitration
:
Updated:
Costs of patent litigation in English courts and a possible unified European Patent Court
:
Updated:
The appeal of lawyer ratings to in-house counsel when they pick a new firm to talk to
:
Updated:
Demographics tip against law departments in the coming decades
:
Updated:
Drugs that may enhance the cognitive abilities of lawyers
:
Updated:
Improve and automate litigation hold orders (PSS Systems’ Atlas LCC)
:
Updated:
Document assembly of contracts at Reuters, Cisco and Microsoft (Business Integrity)
:
Updated:
Worrisome data about vulnerability in the areas of document retention and destruction
:
Updated:
Law firms’ pricing of legal services depends in part on the degree the work is leverageable
:
Updated:
A meta-post on law department processes
:
Updated:
Voice recognition software deserves another listen
:
Updated:
A troubling comment about references on law firms provided by law departments
:
Updated:
How law departments weight the components of law firms’ proposals
:
Updated:
Models of law departments; frameworks and high-level descriptions
:
Updated:
How law departments might look for chemistry with the lawyers proposed by a firm
:
Updated:
A heavy-handed method to enforce core teams at law firms
:
Updated:
An impossible dream: to put a dollar value on every matter concluded for a law department
:
Updated:
An intellectual-property e-billing solution (Honeywell International)
:
Updated:
When does a company start a law department?
:
Updated:
The ratio of partner time to other timekeepers’ time on invoices – no more than 30 percent?
:
Updated:
When a law department wants to do more with PDF files
:
Updated:
Digital transcription technologies and law departments
:
Updated:
A partnering arrangement’s possible effect on lawyers per billion
:
Updated:
Association of Corporate Counsel (ACC) endorsements of alliance vendors
:
Updated:
Is there an optimal law-specialty as background for a general counsel?
:
Updated:
Outsourcing a law department in the Czech Republic
:
Updated:
If calculational mathematicians tackled law department management
:
Updated:
Institutional knowledge at law firms, yet much mobility of partners
:
Updated:
Rees Morrison Morsels #37 Added to Previous Posts
:
Updated:
A nine-box tool and a use: match law firms to type of legal services
:
Updated:
Artificial intelligence (AI) software and legal services – take the very long view
:
Updated:
Globalization and its discontents – the all-lawyer conference to meld an international team
:
Updated:
Cottage industry: off-shore providers and intermediaries of legal services
:
Updated:
Allocation of time by a general counsel (JDS Uniphase)
:
Updated:
Work done in-house compared to dollars spent outside (JDS Uniphase)
:
Updated:
Specialty litigation support firms – medical/nurse analysts
:
Updated:
Agency theory doesn’t translate from economics to law departments
:
Updated:
Semiotics as a sign of things to come and things that have come
:
Updated:
Business intelligence and data mining: all processes create data
:
Updated:
Let’s think again about “commodity” legal services
:
Updated:
Three points from UPS: law outranks HR, business experience, and lawyers from operations
:
Updated:
Display an analytic, quantitative history of the law department and legal spend
:
Updated:
Every conceivable application for a law department in one software installation (GM)
:
Updated:
Fit the position and roles to the person, not the other way around
:
Updated:
Encryption of invoice data transmitted electronically from law firms
:
Updated:
Boards exerting more influence in general counsel selections
:
Updated:
Cottage industry: on-line services to help select law firms (US and Europe)
:
Updated:
24.5 percent more on statistics in law department management
:
Updated:
Developmental coaching and executive coaching
:
Updated:
People in law departments don’t remember accurately how they solved a problem
:
Updated:
Innovation doesn’t fit with process improvement programs?
:
Updated:
Task conflict? We can deal with it. Relationship conflicts? Big problems!
:
Updated:
“Professional” and “decentralized” – thoughts based on one law department (AXA Group)
:
Updated:
Decentralized has two meanings – geographic location and reporting
:
Updated:
What accounts for differences in lawyers per unit of revenue across industries? Patents and regulations
:
Updated:
Four D’s to bring about change
:
Updated:
Does fear of competition deter general counsel from hiring smarter subordinates?
:
Updated:
Proximate causes compared to ultimate causes
:
Updated:
To reach legal expertise takes a decade of concentrated work, plus relentless further effort
:
Updated:
Of nostrums and fortune cookies – platitudes don’t give useful guidance
:
Updated:
Life on The EDGE: DuPont’s tool to help collaboration with its Preferred Law Firms
:
Updated:
Early case assessment and 80 percent known in 60 days (Schering-Plough)
:
Updated:
Groupthink among law department managers, and a few antidotes
:
Updated:
Natural talent is overrated; IQ can rise with effort
:
Updated:
Six Sigma skinnies down to Lean Sigma (GE)
:
Updated:
Three reasons why bonus programs might not pay off in law departments
:
Updated:
Experienced commentary on my post about patent awards
:
Updated:
Alternative dispute resolution by the Department of Justice – data from a large survey
:
Updated:
The “knowledge curse” and mission statements
:
Updated:
“Let’s redouble our efforts!” even if the cause is not worth it (escalation of commitment)
:
Updated:
Rees Morrison Morsels (#36) – small additions to earlier posts
:
Updated:
Calling into question the importance of the general counsel’s leadership
:
Updated:
The winner’s curse that afflicts auctions
:
Updated:
A lumbering description of log-log scales
:
Updated:
Correlation of IQ to performance; how much a correlated variable explains of an outcome
:
Updated:
The diversity survey by Accenture’s law department
:
Updated:
Fundamental weaknesses of “casual” benchmarking
:
Updated:
Consolidation to reduce the number of lawyers (Diamler-Chryler)
:
Updated:
Best techniques to select new employees
:
Updated:
Law departments shouldn’t claim savings from business profits (GE)
:
Updated:
Retaining firms in foreign countries: many of the major firms in France are American
:
Updated:
Venn diagrams as a tool to portray facts about management of law departments
:
Updated:
The increase in partner and associate rates by firm size
:
Updated:
JD/MBA’s in law departments more than in law firms?
:
Updated:
A history of law departments in the United States
:
Updated:
Pre-1900 articles in the New York Times on law department topics
:
Updated:
The Inside Write Stuff: simplify subordinate clauses that include a “to be” verb
:
Updated:
Law department as a shared service
:
Updated:
The imperial general counsel: an antidote
:
Updated:
Chargeable hours at law firms declined in the UK during 2005-2006
:
Updated:
Adjust figures for inflation, such as for spending and compensation
:
Updated:
Weighted averages press heavily on us, in two versions
:
Updated:
Even odds for defendants in US patent and trademark litigation, and frequent reductions of awards
:
Updated:
Partner rates as a function of cost of living allowance (COLA wars)
:
Updated:
Law departments have a choice of integrated online settlement and ADR capabilities
:
Updated:
The legal department, ethics hotlines and compliance officers (Raytheon)
:
Updated:
A survey of surveys on law firm attributes that law departments value
:
Updated:
Differential between partner and associate rates with increases in firm size
:
Updated:
The Community Patent Review Project and two extrapolations on the idea
:
Updated:
Career paths for inside lawyers – few promotions, but some other choices
:
Updated:
E-mail pointers on reply style and length
:
Updated:
Second opinions from outside counsel, confidence in inside counsel and CYA
:
Updated:
How training is delivered in consulting firms, and ideas for law departments
:
Updated:
Teach corporate lawyers the broad picture of the business, with doppelgänger agreements
:
Updated:
Rees Morrison Morsels #35 – additions to earlier posts
:
Updated:
Do experienced legal secretaries cost law departments the same amounts as midlevel paralegals?
:
Updated:
Distribution of in-house paralegals by practice areas
:
Updated:
Prioritize legal risks by severity, likelihood and controllability
:
Updated:
Project-management skills for law-firm litigators (Eversheds)
:
Updated:
A technique to evaluate competitive proposals
:
Updated:
Tight vise; light advice
:
Updated:
Eliminate online research costs charged by firms
:
Updated:
To reserve a block of law firm hours
:
Updated:
Does the “predictive accuracy of outside counsel” constitute a meaningful metric?
:
Updated:
Save electronic copies of law firm work product, but don’t expect a return on your investment
:
Updated:
Three thought-provoking conclusions from recent McKinsey research on management practices
:
Updated:
Give a firm enough work so that you have some clout
:
Updated:
A way to assess collaboration among your in-house lawyers
:
Updated:
Egregious terms in law-firm engagement letters
:
Updated:
Too much tracking of bill challenges and write offs doesn’t make sense
:
Updated:
Don’t over-burden budgets with details and force invoices to match that level of detail
:
Updated:
Five ways to obtain reports from matter management systems
:
Updated:
Ripples from a discounted billing-rate program
:
Updated:
A technique to evaluate competitive proposals
:
Updated:
The legal/law “department” — a discursus on “department”
:
Updated:
All processes and practices in legal departments have pros, cons and cuts-both-ways
:
Updated:
GCs welcome updates from firms about developments in the law, if timely and practical
:
Updated:
What obligation do law departments have to train associates?
:
Updated:
Micro-managing outside counsel by capping hours?
:
Updated:
The sole-lawyer department as outside counsel conductor
:
Updated:
The contrapuntal play between risk minimization and contractual flexibility
:
Updated:
Major and minor responsibilities of in-house counsel
:
Updated:
Legal departments face both Type I and Type II errors
:
Updated:
The Inside Write Stuff: When pronouns might refer back to several nouns – watch out!
:
Updated:
Instrumental variables: clues to law department productivity
:
Updated:
Whether to disclose the names of the converged law firms you have chosen
:
Updated:
Some senior in-house lawyers hold “extreme jobs”
:
Updated:
Low attrition rates during 2006 in UK legal teams
:
Updated:
A bad ending if you believe stories are more influential than statistics
:
Updated:
Dispute in India with solicitors over Rs 141 lakh (almost Rs 1.56 crore)
:
Updated:
California law departments and minority lawyers they hire: From majority or minority controlled firms?
:
Updated:
13 ways to squeeze more insights from law firm invoices
:
Updated:
Numbers of in-house lawyers in New Jersey and some salary data
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Updated:
Another discussion of metrics on what law departments evaluate in outside counsel
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It’s quixotic to speak about the proportion of work law departments send to outside counsel
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Why a rich and precise vocabulary (words and concepts) benefits managers of legal groups
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Do law firms ask major clients about a contemplated merger, or even advise them?
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Eventually, we will have much more data on matter costs
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Litigation management in-house, case management for law firms
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Some illogic in requests for discounts on standard billing rates
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Survey your primary law firms for benchmark data
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Updated:
As a general counsel, encourage different viewpoints, don’t squash them
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Updated:
Data about how hard it may be to pin down the value of in-house patent counsel
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Omniware, a contract management database, and the evolution of matter management systems
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Do larger law departments hire and keep better lawyers?
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A core group of lawyers and paralegals to serve you at your primary law firms
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Why are tax lawyers so often not part of the law department?
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Retrograde effects of institutional knowledge
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Inside counsel and a review of their management of outside counsel
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Client satisfaction is key, but client has three levels of meaning
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Are law departments especially vulnerable to cost-cutting and headcount reductions?
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Query this statement that FTSE 500 legal departments doubled in size in the past three years
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Updated:
Patent prep and prosecution more commodity than patent strategy
:
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Match the firm to the matter, but are you willing to change early on?
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In terms of new client influence, does anything speak louder than money?
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Cottage industry: auditors of law firm invoices (legal bill auditors)
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Do law departments agree to Martindale-Hubbell listing?
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Third-party audits of law firm invoices
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Five different notions packed into the term “virtual” regarding law firms
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The benefits of national coordinating counsel
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US general counsel do not mandate pro bono activities of their law firms
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An enormous state-level law department (New Jersey’s Attorney General Division of Law)
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Large firms have an advantage in risk-taking
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Selection bias applied to law department practices
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An estimate of lawyers in the Fortune 500
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Don’t obsess over disbursements by law firms
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Task-based billing taken to task
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Why we don’t hear about knowledge transfer from law firms to law departments
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What does it matter if a partner is an equity partner or not?
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Selection bias and cracks in what we think we know about law departments
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Rees Morrison Morsels #34 – additions to earlier posts
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All processes and practices in a legal department lie somewhere on a spectrum
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Memes and memetics: an information framework for managers of law departments
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Mergers and their effects on law departments’ mix of outside law firms
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The effect of contract lawyers on benchmark metrics
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Dueling support groups (bureaucratic challenges to internal change)
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Discounts on hourly rates, easy pickin’s but tasteless fruit
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Another dragnet of definitions for the law-department management glossary
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Consultants to law departments to help with corporate counsel’s contribution to business
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Compound annual growth rates (CAGR) as applied to legal spending
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Weight benchmarks of multi-component companies by revenue
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Concentration of local lawyers in New Jersey between largest law firms and largest departments
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An example of a massive coordinated defense in litigation (OxyContin)
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Pay, pride and pals ar the essentials of enthusiastic employees
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Some “local government” in-house data (UK)
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Professional development initiatives for UK in-house lawyers
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Barnstorming through effective brainstorming – Part II on techniques
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Optional reading and thoughts on stock options for legal departments
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A training program for high-potential lawyers (InBev)
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A paradox: add lawyers in-house and yet increase external legal fees
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Law firms as consultants to law departments
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Two meanings of index: a combination of factors or a normalizing technique
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The difference between capped fees and fixed fees
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An exaggerated notion of law-firm chargeable hours
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Personality-test questions and software to make sense of them
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The Inside Write Stuff. Move from familiar information to new information and link back
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Tiered discounts that depend on the amount of services provided
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An up-and-coming title: Legal Administrative Assistant
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Where dictation by in-house counsel stands in terms of productivity
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Concordance software and this blog – irrelevant for law department management
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When you estimate probabilities, use numbers, not words
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Spun off companies and the size of their law departments (FMC Technologies)
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An inducement to in-house counsel to evaluate outside counsel
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To allocate legal department costs to business units – embed the costs in their budgets
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Different tiers of clients who receive client satisfaction surveys
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Very low estimates of chargeable hours in a British law department (Aviva)
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How size of law department correlates to the average number of law firms retained
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Confusion over alternative fee arrangements (AFAs)
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Various ways to blend billing rates
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In-house resource guides prepared by law departments
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Law firms face multiple e-billing systems
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Blog site that reviews IP books
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Criticisms of mandatory arbitration
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The Inside Write Stuff — the stress positions of sentences: the start and the end
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Diminished respect where in-house lawyers lack attorney-client privilege
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An annual “legal network meeting” (Carrillion)
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Decision-makers frustrated or paralyzed by too many choices
:
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The value of clear lines between what business unit lawyers do and what corporate specialists do
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Co-location of business lawyers with their clients
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Three ways to encourage clients, charged for internal time, not to avoid lawyers
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Three startling observations about a litigation approach (Eversheds)
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A nuance on the applicability of most-favored nation agreements – hourly rates only
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The three-way vector that determines billing rate increases at law firms
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Useful calculations for those who analyze law department data
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Why provide data on spending and matters in an RFP?
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Bigger companies become legally more efficient, at least in terms of inside lawyers per unit of revenue
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UK law departments and issues with law firm liability caps
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Height matters in the law department “altocracy,” or perhaps another tall tale?
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Skiving – but don’t waste your time at work reading about this!
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Large European law departments coming to resemble those of the US
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Three suggestions to help cope with the e-mail onslaught
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Most lawyers in-house criticize their performance review system
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The value of after action reviews – post mortems
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Organizational network analysis helps with knowledge management
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Worries about keeping ones in-house job may be exaggerated
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Why normal lawyers should understand standard deviation
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Replace partner costs with paralegals internally (AXA Equitable)
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Expert lawyers work hard to get there even if they are not innately predisposed
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Virtual law firms during a crisis
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A methodological observation and some bewilderment
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Law departments can affect the market’s reaction when a class-action lawsuit is announced
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How long can you expect your law firm to retain your legal files?
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Late payment charges imposed by law firms
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A good example of a standard engagement letter by a law firm
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How much should law departments care about the cost of processing invoices?
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Various ways I think about this blawg’s concepts
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Two more techniques to calculate the value delivered by a law department (DaimlerChrysler UK)
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Worry when your primary law firms require 2000 minimum billable hours a year!
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To measure a process-improvement ratio is a fool’s errand
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One laughable metric (total liability); one new metric (budget to actual)
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Law departments compared to tax departments on management
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Payments to firms based on Total Cost of Resolution (TCR)
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Notional cost per hour to calculate value delivered by a law department (DaimlerChrysler UK)
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All the world’s a stage and general counsel are in the center
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Too much has been made of globalization, cross-border integration
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Three vital steps for productive brainstorming
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Clients used to pay lawyers retainer fees even while they were not using them
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Only a handful of partners, perhaps, in arcane specialty areas
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A commendable secondment arrangement at Icon Office Solutions
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Patronizing attitudes of law firm partners
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Do “retention” and “engagement” mean the same thing when law departments hire law firms?
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Honesty/transparency as a valued quality in law firms when insurers select firms
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A neurological reason why pro bono feels bono
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Deductive, inductive, and abductive reasoning for in-house lawyers
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Board portal software, but used by about one in five companies?
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A breakthrough productivity measure for legal departments – pages per intern
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Going beyond retention letters and outside counsel guidelines
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I strenuously disagree that “a lot of RFPs are simply fishing expeditions”
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What concessions might law firms seek if they agree to provide a discount?
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Ambivalent feelings fuel creativity
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A law department as a billion-dollar profit center (Qualcomm)
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Do law department benchmarking projects violate anti-trust laws?
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Ratios of law department lawyers to private practitioners
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Another piece in the multi-metric index of litigation portfolios
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Guidelines as compared to practices and policies
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Compensation inequality will rise as law departments struggle to retain their outstanding lawyers
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More GCs who became CEOs
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The rebranded Ethics and Compliance Officer Association
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Some results from a Corpedia benchmarking survey
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A sophisticated, web-based compliance program (Genentech)
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Rumors, rumors everywhere and not a thought to think
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The plenitude of associations for in-house lawyers
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Laying down certain laws of human behavior in law departments
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TQM and its progeny for law departments
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What is the potential to patent a law department innovation?
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Analytic tools for law department data – the Gini coefficient of concentration
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Law departments poorly analyze the performance of the firms they hire
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Bureaucracy and law departments
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Silliness about chanting that people are the core of the law department
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Beta, a measure of risk for publicly traded companies, and law departments
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Are multiple billing rates for the same lawyer preferable outside but disagreeable inside?
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Years out of practice or in the department are NOT indicators of promotability
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High hurdles for law departments that want to succeed with diversity
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Extranets may be common but unremarked
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The leading e-billing software used by Amlaw 200 firms
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Diversity numbers half empty or half full?
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Law departments diverge from law firms on some client services
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Processes and their tools
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Taking apart the availability of shredders
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Total legal spending and the inclusion or not of depreciation charges
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How best to find a new law firm, other than personal references
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Drop in CLOs who have fired or are considering firing a law firm
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Outside counsel’s most critical attributes
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Four observations about survey methodology
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To foster diversity, law departments ought to follow three steps
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The value of this blog is in three dimensions
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The connection between quasi-legal work and legalistic units
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Consequences of low turnover rates in law departments
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New roads, filled; new lawyers, filled to capacity (the infinite legal sponge)
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A four-year crusade to prove value is delivered by a huge law department (RBS)
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“Little merit to a full-service law department….”
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Law firms as management consultants to law departments
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Measures of engagement among law department staff
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The sabotage of efficiency by interruptions
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What happens if the general counsel is a bad manager?
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Fear of flying alternatively – billing arrangements other than hourly and discounted
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Policies in law department management compared to practices
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Global invention-disclosure database (Avery Dennison Corp.)
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A model of law department functions: add volume and resources
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Trends in law department management over the next five years
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Efforts to focus on core competencies raise questions
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Cost of knowledge balanced against utility of the knowledge
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Incentive programs for inventors (Dial Corp.)
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Law departments over-invest in software and hardware, but under-invest in training
:
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A half-dozen ways legal consultants can add value to a law department
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Updated:
Going, going, gone – the hammer comes down for online auctions for legal services
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Unfair, even wrong, to demand that a law firm provide you with metrics on its matters
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“Workflow” flaccidness
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Tips for picking a law firm (from tips for picking an investment bank)
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The code of conduct needs the stamp of the General Counsel
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More TLC by GC for BoD
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Leadership’s lost luster in departments of law
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A general counsel should visibly promote and defend the department’s lawyers
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Self-assessment tools for Boards of Directors
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Beware the Ides of false economies with outside counsel
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In litigation IP stands for Incredibly Pricey (or insufficiently proved)!
:
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Has there been progress in law department management?
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Extrapolating GC compensation from the top five compensated executives
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Corporate Secretary functions should be part of the general counsel’s responsibilities
:
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Rees Morrison Morsels #33 – additions to earlier posts
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Total legal spend is driven by client actions although base spend is mediated by the law department
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Spending controlled some by the law department, but dominated by company and industry
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Why management of lawyers is so difficult – the notion of reflexity
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A four-hour grace period to consult outside counsel
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Shopping for management ideas at Sainsbury’s legal department
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Integration of systems — matter management and service of process
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A skirmish you might win in the war on talent: streamline hiring
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A law departments that summarizes the ratings of corporate governance groups
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Common management initiatives as law departments grow by units of 10 lawyers
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Updated:
The portmanteau of one package of board-member software
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The visual display of quantitative law department data (thank you, Prof. Edward Tufte)
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Keep both camps among clients informed about legal costs: executives and financial managers
:
Updated:
Three reviews of business challenges for corporate counsel
:
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What would philosophers say regarding law departments?
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Plaintiff’s law firms funded by hedge funds
:
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An ailing metric: sick days per lawyer per year
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Updated:
The risk that employed lawyers lose their “sense of craft”
:
Updated:
Heightened thinking about augmented-cognition software
:
Updated:
Ten major trends and their effects on law departments (McKinsey)
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Updated:
An open-door policy for a general counsel swings both ways
:
Updated:
Coaching in-house lawyers as compared to other forms of assisting them
:
Updated:
Analysis of net scores from a survey
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Integration of internal guidelines, external guidelines, matter management, retention letters, etc.
:
Updated:
Data on average hourly rates of lawyers in the U. S.
:
Updated:
Teams of one general and one IP attorney to serve business units
:
Updated:
It isn’t the lawyer’s role to negotiate
:
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Two examples of secondment
:
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Rees Morrison Morsels #32 – additions to earlier posts
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Updated:
Entrepreneurial ideas lurking on this blog
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Updated:
Consequences when a law department markets its services
:
Updated:
An alternative to e-billing – bubble forms that can be read after scanning
:
Updated:
General counsel of a law department might deal with the general counsel of a law firm
:
Updated:
Non-U.S. (aka international) legal services
:
Updated:
Management initiatives: effective compared to efficient
:
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Client evaluations of lawyers will become more common as business savvy becomes vital
:
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Factors that erode the rational best choice of a law firm
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Law department employees seen as nadirs of competitiveness
:
Updated:
Surveys within the law department about technology usage
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Advantages of user groups for the software your department installs
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Updated:
Some of the rules that e-billing systems can enforce
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Updated:
The law department cottage industry: a retrospective and look to the future in this
:
Updated:
Dupont’s major investment in offshore resources and million dollar savings
:
Updated:
Minority-owned law firms and minority lawyers at law firms
:
Updated:
Innovative arrangement for law school graduates to get law firm training before joining Citigroup
:
Updated:
The Inside Write Stuff: to comma or not to comma
:
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To improve relations with law firms the most, according to firms, hire us early!
:
Updated:
High rate of bill padding, according to 1996 survey?
:
Updated:
Encourage client service teams at your primary law firms
:
Updated:
Another quasi-legal task: equity award tracking and reporting
:
Updated:
“Pricing among law firms is not competitive when it comes to litigation services”?
:
Updated:
Alternative fees as a survey’s example of revealed preferences over expressed preferences
:
Updated:
Contradictions between expressed and revealed preferences
:
Updated:
One more shot at the metrics proposed by The Open Legal Standard
:
Updated:
Top metrics for law departments by Corp. Legal Standard should topple
:
Updated:
“Top 25 General Law Department Metrics” (Corp. Legal Standard, Inc.)
:
Updated:
Fixed-fee arrangements and out-of-pocket disbursements
:
Updated:
What do we mean by “commodity legal work?”
:
Updated:
Even with a fixed-fee arrangement, the department needs to receive and review bills
:
Updated:
Disclose the names of firms invited to bid competitively
:
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Aggregate outside counsel spend is not a secret that needs to be protected
:
Updated:
Ask key law firms about your performance as a law department, but conceal your identity
:
Updated:
Budgets and fixed-fees share four common elements
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Updated:
Internal client expertise reduces total legal spending (TLS) in large companies
:
Updated:
Best practices defined in terms of diversity
:
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Let’s talk: the power of conversation
:
Updated:
Minority counsel distinguished from diversity counsel
:
Updated:
To protect legal documents from prying eyes, test keystroke and mouse patterns
:
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Newsletters circulated by law departments
:
Updated:
Three tips to make better decisions: alternatives, surrogate arguers, and goal of decision
:
Updated:
Survey respondents hate to say they don’t know or don’t have a view
:
Updated:
Humor and blog posts on law department management – goring the oxymoron
:
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Law department management material is international
:
Updated:
When you compete work, how many incumbent firms, how many new contenders?
:
Updated:
Practice area benchmarks: a retrospective
:
Updated:
The double-entendre of competitive bids for fixed fees
:
Updated:
My gratitude and appreciation to my assistant, Fran Gieda
:
Updated:
Industry makes little difference to issues of management faced by law departments
:
Updated:
The law department should control all outside counsel hiring and firing
:
Updated:
In law departments, people problems may also be or mostly be systemic problems
:
Updated:
A survey of survey flaws: false precision and reliance on the Internet
:
Updated:
Sampling error in statistics and subgroup analysis
:
Updated:
Wannabe lawyers in groups that handle matters with a high legal component
:
Updated:
Grid analysis of options and factors (weighted) to help make decisions
:
Updated:
“Social distance” and how lonely at the top it is for general counsel
:
Updated:
Paired comparison analysis to help make decisions
:
Updated:
An intemperate attack on committees (project teams)
:
Updated:
Pace of change: three to six weeks per habit
:
Updated:
Why don’t law departments formally train core staff at their primary firms?
:
Updated:
A gimlet eye at a metric about how many law firms are at risk of being fired
:
Updated:
Business continuity plans: their importance and content for law departments
:
Updated:
Edward De Bono’s six thinking hats: multi-perspective analysis
:
Updated:
“Law firms make too much money.”
:
Updated:
Significant increase in perception that law firms pad their bills – methodological questions
:
Updated:
International and linguistic diversity (Mary Kay)
:
Updated:
13 “experiential opportunities” for professional development of corporate lawyers
:
Updated:
Over five years, Motorola slashed its legal spending $200 million
:
Updated:
The top lawyer wears many hats – a generalist in a specialist’s age
:
Updated:
Survey of “business challenges” to law departments
:
Updated:
French legal departments, vous ette tres magnifique
:
Updated:
Rees Morrison Morsels #32 – additions to earlier posts
:
Updated:
Additional definitions for the law department management lexicon
:
Updated:
Retention letters and outside counsel guidelines: differences between the two
:
Updated:
Multiple facets of in-house decisions
:
Updated:
The iceberg if law firms don’t bill on time
:
Updated:
Balanced scorecards for law departments (UTC)
:
Updated:
Dashboards compared to balanced scorecards
:
Updated:
Some law departments believe that legal talent is spread around the regions
:
Updated:
Dormant time as a metric of law firm litigation performance
:
Updated:
The futility of collecting work-product from outside counsel
:
Updated:
A proposal for law firms and law departments to entertain tiered billing rates
:
Updated:
A project manager at the law firm for large cases
:
Updated:
The power of Kaizen for law department improvement
:
Updated:
What’s wrong with promoting Peter (the Peter Principle)?
:
Updated:
The commonplace overuse of “world class”
:
Updated:
Law departments and the economics of error
:
Updated:
Observations, trends, predictions and the fallacy of induction
:
Updated:
Watch carefully – perhaps eschew – law firms that impose billable hours requirements
:
Updated:
Value-based payments to firms derived from an index of performance
:
Updated:
Save money with pre-negotiated vendors and mandate that firms use them
:
Updated:
The evolution metaphor and gradual changes in law department practices
:
Updated:
“New-found power wielded by procurement departments”
:
Updated:
Neuro-economics sparks possible explanations of decision-making and risk taking
:
Updated:
Why I abhor the figure of speech “beauty parade”
:
Updated:
“Treat each case as a series of purchasing decisions”
:
Updated:
Law departments need more foxes and fewer hedgehogs
:
Updated:
Unusual events and the Poisson formula to predict their likelihood in a given year
:
Updated:
Thoughts on why law departments retain outside counsel
:
Updated:
An end-to-end sense of contract handling
:
Updated:
Portals: what’s there when you pass through one?
:
Updated:
Conflict of interest troubles with sharing work product among law firms
:
Updated:
The contribution of a super-lawyer far exceeds the contribution of a Clark Kent lawyer
:
Updated:
Brain physiology explains why it’s harder to fire a flesh-and-blood partner than a faceless firm
:
Updated:
Interdiction of over-time charges by law firms
:
Updated:
Three promotions at Mellon Bank that warrant comment
:
Updated:
Competing demands on the time of a general counsel – outside arbitrations?
:
Updated:
Twenty prominent law firm’s web sites judged on effectiveness
:
Updated:
Software that summarizes documents
:
Updated:
Law department growth will forever lag law firm growth
:
Updated:
Cost per hour corresponds to inside-outside mix of spending
:
Updated:
Moral hazard in the operations of law departments
:
Updated:
A golden rule for rules on outside-counsel diversity
:
Updated:
A model for law department management: the components of processes, tools, and productivity
:
Updated:
Technology giveth unto and taketh away from law departments
:
Updated:
Tiered billing-rate discounts based on factors other than dollar volume of services
:
Updated:
Irony in the discourse between law firms and law departments
:
Updated:
The inside Write Stuff – delete nonstructural relative pronouns that lead off clauses
:
Updated:
Peripheral thoughts on core competencies: is the term sensible for law departments?
:
Updated:
To have the managing partner certify compliance with outside counsel guidelines
:
Updated:
Corporate secretary and board member packages may merge
:
Updated:
A Richter scale of cost-saving techniques
:
Updated:
Widespread RFPs compared to targeted talks
:
Updated:
Polite and proper treatment of vendors by law departments
:
Updated:
Discounts from standard rates favor large, expensive firms
:
Updated:
Billing rate discounts that trigger with volume increases, even retroactively
:
Updated:
Attributes inherent in the common use of the term “productivity”
:
Updated:
A competitive bid on rates that takes advantage of a firm’s lower cost structure
:
Updated:
Cottage industry: part-time general counsel
:
Updated:
European GCs intertwine legal and corporate affairs
:
Updated:
Internal guidelines for the use and management of outside counsel
:
Updated:
Rees Morrison Morsels (#31) – tidbits added to previous posts
:
Updated:
Massachusetts spending in 2004 hard to estimate for outside counsel
:
Updated:
Business unit lawyers and corporate legal groups – numbers and reporting (Qualcomm)
:
Updated:
What nooks and crannies of management have not been explored – people
:
Updated:
A table to describe the law department’s roles and responsibilities
:
Updated:
A thoughtful approach toward temporary help (Sears)
:
Updated:
Inside write stuff: expletives deleted
:
Updated:
Stress management training online for Scottish lawyers
:
Updated:
Natural experiments are all that are left to researchers of law department management
:
Updated:
Lawyer compared to operations and management roles in law departments
:
Updated:
The burden and benefit of status reports
:
Updated:
The varied titles for the head of administration in a law department
:
Updated:
Uncertainty dogs efforts to describe litigation in terms of wins and losses
:
Updated:
Guidelines for outside counsel – do they work?
:
Updated:
First- and second-order consequences in management
:
Updated:
National contracts of law departments with vendors, and direction that firms use them
:
Updated:
Coase, transaction costs, and arguments for in-house counsel
:
Updated:
Hand-to-hand combat with electronic billing
:
Updated:
Lawyer-equivalent staff figures
:
Updated:
Non-rival goods and law department management
:
Updated:
A goal: chargeback 100% of outside counsel fees?
:
Updated:
To pursue litigation and settlement simultaneously with different firms
:
Updated:
Another update on the costs of patent litigation, by amount at risk
:
Updated:
Psychology and law department management
:
Updated:
You split the cookie, I’ll choose the half (for law firm budgets)
:
Updated:
Sociology concepts and law department management
:
Updated:
Requests for information (RFI)
:
Updated:
Cottage industry: vendors (other than law firms) that conduct business with law departments
:
Updated:
“It’s more disruptive to replace a firm than to live with poor service” (InsideCounsel)
:
Updated:
Software for communication with members of the Board of Directors
:
Updated:
27 metrics and benchmarks for patent departments
:
Updated:
Has anyone written on the history of law departments? Early references to law
:
Updated:
Cost control idea? Approvals to hire outside counsel
:
Updated:
The storms outside that buffet law departments
:
Updated:
RFP – RIP
:
Updated:
As more women become general counsel…
:
Updated:
Law departments initiate more discovery as plaintiffs do
:
Updated:
Should you start with a requirements study for a new software system?
:
Updated:
Cottage industry: class-action claim recovery firms
:
Updated:
A signing powers policy (SPP)
:
Updated:
Law department as overseer of the contract process – not recommended
:
Updated:
Best methods to train law department lawyers on software
:
Updated:
Adverse selection and the difficulty of assessing the quality of law firms
:
Updated:
Law department management narratives, theories and models (compared to economics)
:
Updated:
Cottage industry: matter management software for law departments
:
Updated:
Cottage industry: court reporters
:
Updated:
In-house compensation in the UK stayed flat or dropped over past three years
:
Updated:
Cottage industry: electronic billing services
:
Updated:
An economist’s perspective: total legal spending declines with increases in company size
:
Updated:
Large law departments have scale advantages, but all is not smooth sailing
:
Updated:
The Horndal effect and continual, cost-less improvements in productivity
:
Updated:
Intervention by law departments in the operations and economics of law firms
:
Updated:
Cottage industry: online legal and compliance training vendors
:
Updated:
Rees Morrison Morsels (#30) – small additions to earlier posts
:
Updated:
Concepts and practices in law department management
:
Updated:
Advantages and disadvantages of executive search firms
:
Updated:
General counsel who report to an erstwhile general counsel
:
Updated:
Might insurance calm nerves that are jangled over fixed-fee arrangements?
:
Updated:
Empirical studies of law departments
:
Updated:
Poor survey methodology, tied to the effectiveness of web sites for law firm marketing
:
Updated:
Cottage industry: litigation and trial consultants
:
Updated:
The most pressing business issues that face law departments (Australia)
:
Updated:
The Inside Write Stuff: avoid strings of prepositional phrases
:
Updated:
A duty of in-house lawyers to make sure the client follows legal advice?
:
Updated:
Spending data on Australian law departments from 2005
:
Updated:
New search powers for in-house lawyers of the near future
:
Updated:
The marketing of law departments
:
Updated:
Five bases to charge business units for internal time
:
Updated:
Statistics and concepts to describe dispersion of law department data
:
Updated:
A proposed standard for full-time lawyer equivalent
:
Updated:
Why law department managers should be vigilant about processes
:
Updated:
Does client training lighten or laden work?
:
Updated:
Create profiles for key client groups
:
Updated:
What added value services might your outside counsel offer?
:
Updated:
Law boos IT, but applauds as well
:
Updated:
Portals – gateways to consolidate legal department information
:
Updated:
Cisco’s law department has an internal blog
:
Updated:
Why law department technology projects fail
:
Updated:
Special interests groups or service providers who research law department management issues
:
Updated:
Distribution of US corporate law departments by number of lawyers: half are five lawyers or less
:
Updated:
Only one general counsel in the NLJ 100 most influential lawyers in America
:
Updated:
A monthly review of cases where the expenditures are highest (BellSouth)
:
Updated:
Legal recruiters as a source of law department lawyers; exclusivity
:
Updated:
Overwhelmed by e-mail: one department fights back
:
Updated:
Position descriptions as stodgy clutter or salutary tools?
:
Updated:
Track cumulative performance by external counsel against matter budgets
:
Updated:
Why is it that law departments have gingerly absorbed technology?
:
Updated:
“Life hacking” to streamline daily tasks and get things done
:
Updated:
Reality as against permission to work from home
:
Updated:
Anger in law departments: an innate quickness to spot it, especially in men and by men
:
Updated:
“A Dissenting View On Arbitration”
:
Updated:
Streamline the time needed to draft routine contracts (GE and DuPont)
:
Updated:
A four-time general counsel
:
Updated:
Law firms should invest, without charge, in key clients
:
Updated:
It’s inappropriate to compare fully-loaded hourly costs inside to average partner rates outside
:
Updated:
Lilliputian thoughts offered swiftly on brobdingnagian legal fees
:
Updated:
Systems that allow employees to report legal and ethical infractions
:
Updated:
Statistical significance has applicability to law department managers
:
Updated:
Unusual partnership between British government authorities to hire law firms jointly
:
Updated:
Role of procurement at Bank of Ireland’s legal department
:
Updated:
Rees Morrison Morsels (#29): additions to earlier posts
:
Updated:
Cisco legal services department and an online contract acceptance tool (Click Accept)
:
Updated:
Australian in-house counsel and whether they track and charge internal legal costs
:
Updated:
Suggestions for how to make more efficient use of e-mail
:
Updated:
E-mail economics – reduce unnecessary copy all and send all
:
Updated:
Who spends more time on invoices, the law firm or the law department?
:
Updated:
Include a user guide to key points that a client (or general counsel) needs to review
:
Updated:
Grander titles for lawyers who serve outside the U.S.
:
Updated:
The Inside Write Stuff: avoid strings of prepositional phrases
:
Updated:
Creativity as a trait of highly successful executives; true for general counsel?
:
Updated:
Slouching toward KM
:
Updated:
The percentage of claims that turn into lawsuits
:
Updated:
Meddling in law firm management: push law firms to use lawyers in lower-cost (rate) cities
:
Updated:
To what degree should a law department get credit for releasing reserves?
:
Updated:
Whether or not large law departments are more managerially innovative
:
Updated:
Obstacles to information–based management efforts – collective, but not individual, benefits
:
Updated:
Most important factor in value by law firms: staffing and distribution of work on a matter
:
Updated:
Effective billing rates contrasted to blended billing rates – a mea culpa
:
Updated:
Law departments and online compliance training
:
Updated:
Bi-lateral secondments between departments and firms
:
Updated:
Words compared to concepts in law department management
:
Updated:
Hire the firm or hire the partner – a function of familiarity (Haier)
:
Updated:
Age differences and the shift to extroversion as a management challenge in law departments
:
Updated:
Number of direct reports to the general counsel – 15 (Honeywell)
:
Updated:
Neuroscience, expertise and attention density
:
Updated:
Legal assistants are junior to paralegals
:
Updated:
Dueling “best practices” – embed lawyers with clients; require legal approval of contracts (BHP Billiton)
:
Updated:
The metric of lawyers per 1,000 employees lacks punch
:
Updated:
The Inside Write Stuff: varieties of series coordination
:
Updated:
Ranks of states on quality and fairness of judiciary may have been shoddy and unfair
:
Updated:
Litigation costs arise from legitimate lawsuits, rarely frivolous ones
:
Updated:
You’ve got to hand it to biometric fingerprint authentication for law departments (Cargill)
:
Updated:
Associations of European in-house lawyers
:
Updated:
Committed to work-life balance for new mothers (Graham Packaging)
:
Updated:
Mental maps, frameworks and the plumbing of the brain
:
Updated:
Productivity gains, more narrowly defined roles, upgraded talent, better clients? (Honeywell)
:
Updated:
Adoption of “best practices” is a bad practice
:
Updated:
Scatter grams (scatter plots) that let you see a pattern
:
Updated:
Rees Morrison Morsels (#28) added to previous posts
:
Updated:
Carrots and sticks don’t help bring about change in the law department
:
Updated:
A definition of the term legal risk
:
Updated:
With partnering so touted, why are there not more virtual teams?
:
Updated:
Do companies commonly designate a GC stand-in for emergencies?
:
Updated:
Do skills of GCs clearly affect share price?
:
Updated:
The rungs of the skills ladder inside may not match the rungs of the services-needed ladder
:
Updated:
You can’t over-stress the prevalence and damage of workplace stress
:
Updated:
Enron and SOX encourage hourly billing
:
Updated:
To control outside counsel, hire excellent, experienced inside counsel
:
Updated:
The Pandora’s Box of billing business units for inside lawyer time
:
Updated:
Fear of change and a neural explanation for some of its morale issues
:
Updated:
People make or break management initiatives
:
Updated:
Knowledge of statistics is 94.3% important for in-house counsel
:
Updated:
All management expresses values
:
Updated:
The difference between a strategy, emergent or formal, and a plan
:
Updated:
The sigmoid curve of management initiatives
:
Updated:
Telecommuters work hard to protect this dirty little secret
:
Updated:
A general counsel’s budget should include settlements and awards (Friedman and Stewart)
:
Updated:
Neuroscience and law departments – working memory and the challenge of change
:
Updated:
The business ecosystem of law — more on the law-department cottage industry
:
Updated:
Decoding culture in law departments
:
Updated:
The Inside Write Stuff: three techniques of simple coordination
:
Updated:
In-house lawyers who also teach at law school or business school
:
Updated:
Best practices favor new practices, but often wrongly
:
Updated:
Why I disparage discounts on billing rates
:
Updated:
Conditional billing rates – further reflections based on a comment
:
Updated:
To drive down law-firm costs, rubber must meet the road (incentives for individual lawyers)
:
Updated:
Law firms and charges to prepare bills — is it ever appropriate?
:
Updated:
If an associate leaves, should the law firm absorb all costs of replacement?
:
Updated:
One out of five large departments does not assess outside counsel
:
Updated:
Unit billing as an alternative fee arrangement
:
Updated:
Does acceptance of alternative fee structures vary by type of matter?
:
Updated:
Patents pooled in a defense alliance fund
:
Updated:
The Inside Write Stuff – absolutes to modify and add details
:
Updated:
Why this data for patent litigation and expert witness fees can’t be true
:
Updated:
An excellent article about a city’s management of tort litigation (City of New York)
:
Updated:
Checks and balances where there are business lawyers and legal specialists
:
Updated:
An assembly line for handling voluminous litigation (City of New York)
:
Updated:
Pre-empt competitors from retaining the law firm you might want
:
Updated:
Top eight methods to control legal costs (InsideCounsel)
:
Updated:
Why law departments don’t care about on-line, real-time time recording
:
Updated:
Rees Morrison Morsels (#26) to add to previous posts
:
Updated:
Evaluations of litigation firms on a scorecard of more than 30 performance criteria (BP)
:
Updated:
Law firms and their engagement letters (AXA Konzern)
:
Updated:
Comparative writing styles of in-house lawyers and outside counsel
:
Updated:
Differences in cost discipline for amounts spent on litigation as plaintiff or as defendant?
:
Updated:
Hard facts on a tender process (Nestlé’s competitive bid project)
:
Updated:
Audit of Los Angeles Office of the City Attorney dismisses claims of quantifiable benefits
:
Updated:
A disappointing state audit of Los Angeles’s spending on outside counsel (California)
:
Updated:
The expert witness industry and amounts paid by law departments
:
Updated:
To manage the knowledge of outside law firms for the good of the law department
:
Updated:
Fixed fee work: is Eversheds ahead of the curve, or around the bend?
:
Updated:
Three annual satisfaction surveys regarding with outside counsel (Exelon)
:
Updated:
Whither the term “secretary?”
:
Updated:
A bizarre number of domestic law firms and an odd ratio to foreign law firms
:
Updated:
To what degree has technology improved law department productivity?
:
Updated:
Judicial hell-holes, and an idea to index the risk of lawsuits
:
Updated:
Another legal wiki: wiki-law.org
:
Updated:
Cycle time for lawsuits – 48 months reduced to less than 12 months (FMC Technologies)
:
Updated:
A common misperception: all in-house lawyers do is review contracts
:
Updated:
In-house counsel: is “left brained” or “right brained” hare-brained?
:
Updated:
Disappointment with matter management systems
:
Updated:
“Flat fees tend to encourage clients to demand more than they’re paying for…”
:
Updated:
How do you manage a lawyer who knows more about a technical area than you do?
:
Updated:
What do we mean by “chargeable” time for inside lawyers?
:
Updated:
Metrics normalized per lawyer may distort understanding and comparisons
:
Updated:
There’s value when you manage projects that have legal ramifications
:
Updated:
Rees Morrison Morsel’s (#25) that supplement previous posts
:
Updated:
Practice groups, as distinct from business unit groups and specialists groups (Intuit)
:
Updated:
The difference between communication and collaboration
:
Updated:
Multiple billing (charge-back) rates for inside lawyers is not a good idea
:
Updated:
If you increase leverage in your department, you drive up your fully-loaded cost per lawyer hour
:
Updated:
The Fundamental Attribution Error and its application to in-house lawyers
:
Updated:
Collective, confidential evaluations of outside counsel
:
Updated:
The Inside Write Stuff – appositives to define something negatively or to generalize
:
Updated:
Personality attributes most important to be successful corporate counsel
:
Updated:
HR not using the law department, but then changing (Williams-Sonoma)
:
Updated:
Trend of fewer federal products-liability cases
:
Updated:
“Skills corporate counsel will need to learn over the next five years to remain effective” (Canadian)
:
Updated:
“Pay me less but work me less” – conflicting data
:
Updated:
“Issues that are currently of greatest concern to corporate counsel” (Canadian)
:
Updated:
If you market new services, does your good deed get punished by too much work? (Kraft)
:
Updated:
“Most important functions that corporate counsel perform for the management team” (Canadian)
:
Updated:
Six reasons why US-style litigation hasn’t taken root in the UK
:
Updated:
A portfolio model of human capital – in the context of law departments
:
Updated:
Government law departments that cannot retain outside counsel
:
Updated:
Decision-making depends on properly framing the problem
:
Updated:
“Influence diagrams” help clarify relationships among factors that shape a major legal event
:
Updated:
Boost morale and with a departmental commitment to pro bono (Computer Associates)
:
Updated:
Semantic network mapping to review discovery documents – huge productivity increases
:
Updated:
Office layout, law department productivity, and how not to design a law department
:
Updated:
A list of nine diversity tools for an in-house legal department (GE)
:
Updated:
For legal department attorneys, in-house training on financial literacy
:
Updated:
Total legal spending at General Electric – about one-third of 1 percent of revenue
:
Updated:
Strong dotted line/solid line – one distinction is who can hire or fire a lawyer (GE)
:
Updated:
Uncommitted associates and quality control
:
Updated:
Academics who have an interest in law department management
:
Updated:
Contract administrators and lawyers (Convergys)
:
Updated:
16% of firms account for 80%+ of outside counsel spending, but an odd conclusion (UPS)
:
Updated:
Law department as the “independent beacon of ethics and compliance” (Computer Associates)
:
Updated:
Consequences to law departments of the hypertrophic growth of some law firms
:
Updated:
Legal ability assumed, understanding of the business distinguishes a corporate lawyer
:
Updated:
Rees Morrison Morsels #24 (tidbits for earlier posts)
:
Updated:
The Inside Write Stuff – appositives add clarity and punch
:
Updated:
It only takes 50 questions to evaluate patent litigation counsel (PetSmart)
:
Updated:
Definitions of important terms in legal department management
:
Updated:
More important than individual client satisfaction is shareholder value, company goals, or social responsibility
:
Updated:
Tacit billing collusion because law firms’ financial data is bruited everywhere
:
Updated:
Doubting Thomas questions the ability of generalist corporate lawyers to review some bills
:
Updated:
A law department think-tank
:
Updated:
The term “value-added” isn’t
:
Updated:
Litigation management trends, upward and downward
:
Updated:
No individual mistakes outside of processes
:
Updated:
Technology solutions ranked by law departments
:
Updated:
The Inside Write Stuff – where you place a participial phrase makes a difference
:
Updated:
Mentors – a loose and over-rated notion
:
Updated:
Morrison’s Clepsydra Awards
:
Updated:
More myths held by law firm partners about law departments
:
Updated:
Expensing options will harm law departments’ ability to compete with law firm compensation
:
Updated:
Shadow shares for law firms who handle company-influencing matters
:
Updated:
Low worth ascribed to first and second year associates
:
Updated:
What does this blog author mean by “management?”
:
Updated:
Rees Morrison Morsels No. 23 (short additions to previous posts)
:
Updated:
Billions from corporations to tort lawyers, fueled by victories with contingency
:
Updated:
What are “processes” in law departments? And, so what?
:
Updated:
Continuing Legal Education may help lawyers live longer!
:
Updated:
Applying science to the management of services
:
Updated:
Economic concepts as they apply to law-department management (compound interesting)
:
Updated:
Five ways to get the most from a vendor demo of software
:
Updated:
Successful shifts from partner to GC-level in-house lawyer
:
Updated:
Psychometric (personality) tests to screen out and screen in prospective hires
:
Updated:
Help on managing your contracts, from your law firm!
:
Updated:
ASP or self-hosted software? IT is a conflicted referee of that decision
:
Updated:
Crystal balls and litigation catastrophe odds
:
Updated:
Managing lawyers who do not speak English as a primary language
:
Updated:
“Credence goods,” the risk that a firm will over-lawyer, and some protections for law departments
:
Updated:
Tmesis, and outside lawyers vying for direct access to clients
:
Updated:
Internal barriers to settlement as a cost-driver
:
Updated:
Warm up to the idea of not freezing billing rates
:
Updated:
The struggle to wrest from clients their felt prerogative to choose outside counsel
:
Updated:
Even if the same rank, should in-house counsel have the same approval levels for bills?
:
Updated:
Internal Labor Market (ILM) analyses for large law departments
:
Updated:
Litigation insurance – even after the lawsuit has been filed!
:
Updated:
Uniform Task-Based Management System (UTBMS) not up to the task
:
Updated:
Workers’ compensation claims that end in litigation – metrics and management
:
Updated:
Today’s seventh post, on sabbaticals
:
Updated:
Golden-apples-to-golden-apples benchmark comparisons
:
Updated:
Repetitive, redundant, over and over many times and again stress injuries in law departments
:
Updated:
Four corporate lawyers to each secretary?
:
Updated:
A economic point that distinguishes law-firm discounts from rebates
:
Updated:
For economics and recruitment use interns, but beware the downsides
:
Updated:
Lawsuits related to the workplace and employee damages – jurimetric myths
:
Updated:
Morrison’s Morsels No. 22 (additions to previous posts)
:
Updated:
The uses of unique matter codes
:
Updated:
Why systems and software attract cost-control advocates more than do personal dealings
:
Updated:
Golf outings and tickets sway general counsel, but not as much as law firms imagine
:
Updated:
“Technology of production” drives the need for more in-house lawyers
:
Updated:
The varied pricing models of e-billing vendors
:
Updated:
For matter management systems, accounting may dictate when to create some matters
:
Updated:
“Decision tools” – what does that mean for in-house practitioners?
:
Updated:
Legal committees of trade associations
:
Updated:
Is in-house up to GC better than law firm over GC?
:
Updated:
A skill of the best lawyEARs
:
Updated:
“Sweeping up after the elephants” – the sad lot of most in-house drones
:
Updated:
Job pressure on a solo general counsel compared to a Deputy GC in charge of 20 lawyers
:
Updated:
The Inside Write Stuff: Emphasis and drama — a critical word or phrase at the start of a sentence
:
Updated:
Role play as a training technique (plus, it’s fun!)
:
Updated:
Law departments lead small private practices in technology, lag large firms
:
Updated:
UK heads of legal drop technology to the bottom of their priorities
:
Updated:
UK in-house solicitors with Practicing Certificates in the UK circa 2002; US comparisons
:
Updated:
What bothers in-house counsel compared to what might prompt them to leave
:
Updated:
Empower – and trust – clients to handle legal issues (Disney)
:
Updated:
Rotations of lawyers – from specialist to generalist – at Philips
:
Updated:
Antitrust training at Philips, with estimates of confidence
:
Updated:
Advantages of working in-house
:
Updated:
What bugs in-house lawyers? Limited opportunities to rise, but some surprises, too
:
Updated:
Opportunities at universities for law department lawyers to learn about business
:
Updated:
Bold leaders from the cautious and risk averse?
:
Updated:
Total cost of IP legal services as proportion of value of IP assets
:
Updated:
Different views for UK heads of legal than for US general counsel
:
Updated:
Different reporting lines for UK heads of legal than for US general counsel
:
Updated:
Calculating your “Total Cost of Electronic Discovery (TCeD)”
:
Updated:
Select outside litigation counsel based on listening to tape recordings of arguments before judges?
:
Updated:
Morrison’s Morsels – No. 21
:
Updated:
ARMA and its Risk Profiler Self-Assessment for E-Discovery
:
Updated:
Total law firms retained ought to exclude foreign IP agents and purely local litigation counsel
:
Updated:
Converge law firms in the US; diverge overseas?
:
Updated:
Flexible staff arrangements available to law departments
:
Updated:
“Invoice” compared to “bill” compared to “statement”
:
Updated:
Is the hairline of law departments receding?
:
Updated:
Metrics on patent, trademark and copyright cases, 1992- 2003
:
Updated:
In-house counsel and the attorney client privilege – a multi-jurisdictional survey (Lex Mundi)
:
Updated:
From patent trolls to secret agent patents
:
Updated:
Alliances with vendors to gain benefits for the department
:
Updated:
The Write Stuff: Use the introductory “what” to highlight the contrast between two sentences
:
Updated:
Procurement, law departments and some further thoughts
:
Updated:
Every resolved litigation should instruct us and our clients
:
Updated:
Beauty contests with a twist: the attraction of looks and height
:
Updated:
Perhaps the future, far far away, of invoice analysis – analytic software
:
Updated:
Law firms, through surveys, as eventual providers of management metrics
:
Updated:
Full cost of a new matter management system includes conversion of data
:
Updated:
Top 10 desiderata for law firms when they respond to RFPs
:
Updated:
Pace of change for law departments
:
Updated:
The fine difference between “fixed fee” and “flat fee”
:
Updated:
The Inside Write Stuff: Either that or which can introduce relative clauses referring to noun “things”
:
Updated:
Rees Morrison’s Morsels #149: posts longa, morsels breva
:
Updated:
Morrison Morsels – No. 19
:
Updated:
Distinctive coordination efforts at Accenture: Leadership Council and “market makers”
:
Updated:
GE collects diversity metrics from its law firms
:
Updated:
Advice biases that vary by the problem’s difficulty and the cost of the advice
:
Updated:
Uninformed speculation on non-law firm providers of legal guidance
:
Updated:
A tough nut, to control documents while multiple parties (inside and outside) draft and review
:
Updated:
Is the wave from Wilmington ebbing? Challenges to convergence
:
Updated:
Collaborative computing between law departments and their law firms
:
Updated:
Litigation risk-evaluation software (Predix from Bridgeway Software)
:
Updated:
Differences between retaining litigation counsel and transactional counsel (a Poe distinction)
:
Updated:
Litigators as orphans; other in-house counsel have parent clients
:
Updated:
Societe General’s recent panel review illustrates three points
:
Updated:
Strive for transparency and comprehension on how bonus decisions are made
:
Updated:
Contract general counsel, in-house counsel, and outside counsel
:
Updated:
Do partners fake praise, or withhold criticism of law department lawyers and their work product?
:
Updated:
Corporate lawyer compensation and management issues in New Zealand
:
Updated:
Reasons to go in-house; reasons not to go in-house
:
Updated:
More on law departments that pay for themselves – EMC Corp.
:
Updated:
Two universities shared a general counsel!
:
Updated:
Three lessons on structure from PPG Industries
:
Updated:
Some odd thinking about diversity
:
Updated:
IT departments ignore law departments as a low priority user group
:
Updated:
Open source respositories for law department managers
:
Updated:
Concepts of economists that apply to law departments (meta-post)
:
Updated:
Your legal skills are likely to deteriorate once you go in-house (BCG)
:
Updated:
Hierarchy of titles below Associate and Assistant General Counsel
:
Updated:
Certificates of paralegals in law departments: CLA and RP and others
:
Updated:
Morrison’s Morsels #18
:
Updated:
Whimper, sniff – blogs don’t persuade general counsel to hire anyone
:
Updated:
The sunk-cost fallacy can swamp law department decisions
:
Updated:
Not a pigment of your imagination, law departments!
:
Updated:
Business intelligence (BI) software compared to knowledge management (KM) software
:
Updated:
Neurophysiological pharmacology and the happy in-house lawyer
:
Updated:
What’s the difference between General Counsel and Chief Legal Officer?
:
Updated:
You say “many general counsels,” I say “many general counsel” (and no one says “many generals counsel”)
:
Updated:
Free riders in law departments
:
Updated:
Perk up the tried-and-true org chart
:
Updated:
Solutions to silos – the separateness of lawyers supporting business units
:
Updated:
Well-run law departments aren’t those that avoided the potholes of sputtering departments
:
Updated:
General counsel’s compensation on executive budget line
:
Updated:
Slender payoff from patent activity
:
Updated:
When even cubicles disappear for lawyers (Sun Microsystems and its untethered lawyers)
:
Updated:
The Inside Write Stuff: Put important points at the end or the beginning of the sentence
:
Updated:
Is the law department (and compliance) an “emergency management profession?”
:
Updated:
Inside The Write Stuff: Omit a comma before a phrase that fuses with its noun antecedent
:
Updated:
Nuts and bolts of how to manage litigation hold orders
:
Updated:
Continuity of lawyers who retain outside counsel
:
Updated:
Too often CV means “Challenged Veracity”; resume résume checking
:
Updated:
Modest need for international lawyers in US law departments
:
Updated:
Hours of lawyer work done outside compared to dollars spent outside
:
Updated:
The fact/value dichotomy does not exist, not even in law department management
:
Updated:
Certified legal assistants are as common as non-certified, and earn a tad more
:
Updated:
Social software beckons to law departments – no sin to encourage some wikiness
:
Updated:
Believe it or not: More pay for secretaries who use shorthand compared to dictation equipment
:
Updated:
Morrison’s Morsels #17 (Additions to previous posts)
:
Updated:
The comp chasm between corporate law departments and other law departments
:
Updated:
How accurately to law department surveys describe law departments (reliability of single respondents)?
:
Updated:
“The key trait companies look for in General Counsel candidates is business aptitude.”
:
Updated:
Do as I say, not as I do on diversity
:
Updated:
Nature (the firm) vs. nurture (the lawyer)
:
Updated:
Skeletons in the closet of an online list of subject matter experts (SMEs)
:
Updated:
Law departments, A-players and A-positions
:
Updated:
Left-handed lawyers – doubly damned?
:
Updated:
Now graying and soon going law-department veterans, with little preservation of their knowledge
:
Updated:
Silent bells and mirages: no taxonomy of law-department-management (LDM) concepts
:
Updated:
Starry-eyed images of the general counsel’s expected reach
:
Updated:
Don’t ask clients “How’d we do?” after routine services
:
Updated:
Savings from early case assessment (ECA) calculated by DuPont
:
Updated:
Institutional knowledge, the shibboleth for advocates of convergence
:
Updated:
Global law departments disparage one-stop shopping
:
Updated:
Proof of value delivered when in-house counsel litigate
:
Updated:
Descriptions of competencies for law department lawyers
:
Updated:
Verdict and settlement information key for nimble litigation management
:
Updated:
Law department IS staff and support ratios
:
Updated:
Core competencies at Philip Morris (IP, AT and FCPA)
:
Updated:
Penny-ante matters which are run-of-the-mill for low stakes — definitions
:
Updated:
Criteria for placing law firms on the list of preferred providers for high stakes matters
:
Updated:
Expert staff in law departments who become known outside are hard to keep
:
Updated:
Morrison’s Morsels #16
:
Updated:
Different billing rates for the same lawyer, according to the task’s usefulness to the client
:
Updated:
Nominal and inflation-adjusted billing rates and legal spend
:
Updated:
Electronic voting software: an underutilized, easy-to-use meeting tool
:
Updated:
Look deeper at ratios of lawyers per paralegal; practice areas differ greatly
:
Updated:
Amounts saved by online auctions for legal services – 24 percent?
:
Updated:
Vulnerability audits engaged in by legal departments
:
Updated:
Categorize work sent to outside counsel as global, national, regional, local or boutique?
:
Updated:
Librarians have not vanished in large law departments
:
Updated:
Public sector experience as springboard for minority GCs of Fortune 500 companies
:
Updated:
Everywhere, overly-generous retentions of outside counsel raise hackles (Kenya)
:
Updated:
More on monumental litigation and its share-price consequences
:
Updated:
Good metrics evaluate in-house performance and outside counsel performance on same matters (NCR)
:
Updated:
A department moves most of its legal work to law firms to save money! (NCR)
:
Updated:
The Write Stuff: Improve flow and indicate relative importance with a gerund phrase
:
Updated:
Recent or upcoming conferences with sessions on law department management
:
Updated:
Six Sigma and improvements in the patent process at International Truck and Engine
:
Updated:
Measure what irks and perks employees, but remember the happiness “set point”
:
Updated:
Do soon-to-retire general counsel favor law firms that might hire them?
:
Updated:
Balanced scorecard, client survey and law department education (Northwestern Mutual)
:
Updated:
When a new general counsel comes from a law firm, how fares the former firm fare?
:
Updated:
In 2002, average of $1,200 per trademark renewal registration (TRW)
:
Updated:
If you want to understand Six Sigma Speak ….
:
Updated:
Ineffectual control of European law firm costs in 2005: their profits rose more than 20 percent
:
Updated:
Six generic processes by which law department managers make decisions
:
Updated:
Dual-track career paths: generalist managers and specialist experts
:
Updated:
The lobbying function and its oblique relation to law departments
:
Updated:
The Write Stuff: Emphasize an action with a gerund phrase
:
Updated:
A department rethinks its job evaluation arrangement (John Deere)
:
Updated:
Inside lawyers should manage litigation firms, not themselves litigate
:
Updated:
The economics look bad for invoice review
:
Updated:
Functional, dotted-line reporting: huh?
:
Updated:
Bet-the-company litigation (BTCL) happens rarely yet is referred to incessantly
:
Updated:
Explain the value of compensation and benefits over time (John Deere)
:
Updated:
The value to an in-house lawyer of an officer title
:
Updated:
Prevalence of patents for litigation support software
:
Updated:
A search for books by “law department”on Amazon.com (note the 1907 classic
:
Updated:
Argument diagramming as a tool to develop critical thinking
:
Updated:
Pass up SMART goals in favor of DUMB goals
:
Updated:
Recent law review articles about general counsel and their roles
:
Updated:
Levels of metrics analysis can go forever
:
Updated:
Reflections on Law Department Management – this blawg – after one year and 1,000 posts
:
Updated:
Cycle time for lawsuits and some analytic metrics
:
Updated:
How law departments adjust to bone-crushing (major) litigation
:
Updated:
The pressure for “alacrity over accuracy” on in-house counsel
:
Updated:
Eras of law-department management
:
Updated:
HR lawyers report to VP of Human Resources (Intel)
:
Updated:
Myth of collective knowledge within anthropomorphized law firms
:
Updated:
Morrison’s Morsels #16
:
Updated:
Subservience risk of decentralized in-house lawyers compared to “independence” of outside counsel
:
Updated:
General counsel and love and Valentine’s Day
:
Updated:
The penalties of un-bonuses: uncertainty, undue influence, and unequal portions
:
Updated:
Concept searching software and applications for in-house attorneys
:
Updated:
Do general counsel hired from the outside earn more than general counsel promoted from inside?
:
Updated:
Symbolism & the GC
:
Updated:
Morrison’s Morsels #15
:
Updated:
Three thoughts on how to make better decisions
:
Updated:
How a law department can get budgets from law firms (American Express)
:
Updated:
Unethical to bill Client A for travel and Client B for work done at the same time – but how would either client know?
:
Updated:
In-side counsel are fixed costs; outside counsel are variable costs
:
Updated:
NIPP and tuck: law department lawyers ought to care about law firm profitability
:
Updated:
Fixed-fee arrangements ought to wrap in firm management measures
:
Updated:
Data visualization software helps lawyers “see” e-mails, but what else?
:
Updated:
Four parts to “organizational DNA,” according to Booz Allen
:
Updated:
Malpractice recoveries and the billing-rate gap
:
Updated:
No good deed goes un-criticized, even IP recovery programs by law departments
:
Updated:
A fly in the ointment of Incentives (and disincentives) for counsel on transactions
:
Updated:
Self-serve, by which clients address some legal needs on their own, can be aided by outside counsel
:
Updated:
Measuring legal complexity – an example taxing in the extreme
:
Updated:
Seek budgets to test assumptions and strategy more than to shave costs
:
Updated:
Ten dumbest things GCs can do as managers of the law department
:
Updated:
Effectiveness of harassment training unproven
:
Updated:
From evaluations to performance management
:
Updated:
Could “prediction markets” clarify the likelihood of major legal events?
:
Updated:
Matrix-reporting: the bane of combining regional, functional, and business unit orientations
:
Updated:
Incumbent familiarity not valued in two panel selections (DaimlerChrysler Retail and Euronext.liffe)
:
Updated:
Six and the single-lawyer department
:
Updated:
The coming frontier; cognitive lawyering
:
Updated:
To justify a competitive-bid process, have a $500,000+ carrot
:
Updated:
Getting floored about lawyers on their own floor
:
Updated:
Neuroscience and lawyers: amygdala high-jacks in jurisprudes?
:
Updated:
Potential interactions between the law and compliance departments (or staff)
:
Updated:
When you evaluate a lawsuit against a competitor, bear in mind its marketing consequences
:
Updated:
Morrison’s Morsels (post scripts to previous posts) #13
:
Updated:
Will law departments appreciate client-specific extranets (portals)?
:
Updated:
Law departments in “global,” “multi-national,” and “international” structures
:
Updated:
Not a buyer’s market for competent counsel in many countries
:
Updated:
Shared knowledge among groups of lawyers facing similar issues: the power of
:
Updated:
Employment litigation metrics from European companies
:
Updated:
A short glossary of British terms used in law department management
:
Updated:
Non-English-speaking inside lawyers and developments in translation software
:
Updated:
Lawyers and managers do not have to know each other’s forte
:
Updated:
Optimistic lawyers, but out of touch with reality
:
Updated:
Rule of thumb: one specialist lawyer for every two business-unit lawyers
:
Updated:
Litigation documents and vendors by category at LegalTech 2005 (NYC)
:
Updated:
Four oddities from one UK in-house update
:
Updated:
Not a core function, a real-estate group has no lease on life (BBC)
:
Updated:
Game theory – playing around or practical for law departments?
:
Updated:
Emotional intelligence predicts 58% of a lawyer’s career success
:
Updated:
“The first thing we do, is promote all the lawyers!” A nod to Henry VI and Dick The Butcher
:
Updated:
Quantophrenic general counsel
:
Updated:
The “maximum of two drafts” rule for memos at Schering-Plough
:
Updated:
DuPont’s $100 MM plus recoveries: law department as profit center
:
Updated:
More complaints about newly-minted associates’ rates than about partners’ rates
:
Updated:
Useful suggestions to prepare for mediation
:
Updated:
A “buddy system” to build collegiality (Cox Communications)
:
Updated:
Values assessment as a law department tool (Cox Communications)
:
Updated:
Morrison’s Morsels #13 (Additions to previous posts)
:
Updated:
The PepsiCo Legal Academy, and a rumination on the law-business continuum
:
Updated:
Apologies as a technique to reduce litigation costs
:
Updated:
Where does compliance report in financial institutions (circa 2004)?
:
Updated:
Discrepancies between stated intentions of law departments and subsequent actions
:
Updated:
Regression to the mean explains some data, including on savings
:
Updated:
“Ideally, the general counsel should report to the board of directors” (?)
:
Updated:
Group Development Questionnaire (GDQ): tool to improve law-department teams
:
Updated:
Software that searches all e-mails and instant messages
:
Updated:
In-house technology award for matter management system available (securely) to outside counsel
:
Updated:
Three keys to law department’s best deployment of “knowledge worker” lawyers
:
Updated:
Harvard flunks on billable hours (Fie! Beta Kappa Fee)
:
Updated:
Keep your lawyers on the same floor!
:
Updated:
Peer-to-peer leadership development
:
Updated:
Evolution from corporate consigliore to courtroom star as client-relationship partner
:
Updated:
Non-competes for in-house lawyers and some ethics issues with that in New Jersey
:
Updated:
General counsel compensation (Texas publicly-traded) and AMLAW 200 partner compensation
:
Updated:
Listen to your documents and e-mail
:
Updated:
Litigation document support in-house (Verizon and Altria)
:
Updated:
IP management groups and their relationship to the law department
:
Updated:
How to lessen peer pressure, and the general counsel chill, when taking a decision
:
Updated:
IBM’s “jams” let globally dispersed law departments share ideas on key initiatives
:
Updated:
Competitive bids obtained through law department auctions: further thoughts on my article
:
Updated:
Morrison’s Morsels #12 – Additions to Previous Posts
:
Updated:
Attributes for outside counsel selection (Kirkpatrick & Lockhart’s 2005 Top of Mind survey)
:
Updated:
A kudo and a criticism for Kirkpatrick & Lockhart’s 2005 Top of Mind survey
:
Updated:
“Net promoters” and “detractors” as an alternative to batteries of client-satisfaction questions
:
Updated:
Hire former employees for tasks that support litigation (Purdue Pharma)
:
Updated:
A customized program to understand the full costs of patents (RIB-X Pharmaceuticals)
:
Updated:
Integrate clients with their litigation: ChevronTexaco’s COBALT and its extranet
:
Updated:
Cross-functional teams for special projects (Independence Blue Cross)
:
Updated:
Outsourcing a law department: circa 1920 (National City and Shearman)
:
Updated:
It’s not as simple as showing your internal hourly cost is less than outside hourly rates
:
Updated:
Incentives to researchers to increase patent applications
:
Updated:
A methodology to show the cost savings a law department generates
:
Updated:
Law–related services handled in India for US companies: three variations
:
Updated:
Accenture’s UK legal department offshores legal work to Mauritius
:
Updated:
The endowment effect and law-firm billing arrangements
:
Updated:
Do your job titles reflect and explain the work your staff does?
:
Updated:
Different treatments of costs included in law departments’ internal budgets
:
Updated:
Does having more in-house counsel raise revenue per employee?
:
Updated:
Law department “business managers” lower legal costs and increase productivity 10-15 percent
:
Updated:
Breaking the logjam – GCs being promoted
:
Updated:
American Express has applied to patent a solution to law firm rate increases
:
Updated:
Least-favored billing commitments by law firms
:
Updated:
Phuse phixed phees phor phases, phractional phunding phor the phuture
:
Updated:
The CFO demands a budget estimate how many months in advance???
:
Updated:
Number of lawsuits pending is not as useful a benchmark as number of major lawsuits pending
:
Updated:
Keep matter budgets in line with exposure estimates
:
Updated:
Segment benchmarking: necessary for multiple-business companies
:
Updated:
Ambiguous data about law departments that “fired a firm in 2005”
:
Updated:
Improve and train your voice with voice analysis
:
Updated:
Use company-wide evaluations in your law department
:
Updated:
Try to match lawyer grade/titles to client grade/titles
:
Updated:
Does corporate counsel knowledge have a half-life?
:
Updated:
SEC actions and prosecutions against general counsel, 1998-2005
:
Updated:
Preventive law training and risk management – “the brutal logic of risk”
:
Updated:
Specialized software for Corporate Secretaries
:
Updated:
Salary compression caused by hiring new lawyers
:
Updated:
Ratio of associate fees to costs
:
Updated:
Will patent “trolls” drive up litigation fees and in-house patent costs?
:
Updated:
Audit Committees and oversight of legal activities of a company
:
Updated:
Cognitive style diversity more important than demographic diversity
:
Updated:
Where CLE is mandatory, is in-house compliance perfunctory?
:
Updated:
Bayesian statistics and its applicability to law departments
:
Updated:
Passive-aggressive law departments: is yours one?
:
Updated:
Strategic narratives in place of strategic plans
:
Updated:
The Black-Scholes formula for valuing options granted in-house lawyers
:
Updated:
Decisions, decisions: trees and analysis
:
Updated:
Morrison’s Morsels #11
:
Updated:
Ethics Officer Association (EOA) and eight global standards
:
Updated:
Irrational optimism when we take rare, big-bet decisions; undeserved caution on serial decisions
:
Updated:
A law department shares information with a corporate mainframe database (McDonald’s)
:
Updated:
McDonald’s law department and document assembly
:
Updated:
Providers of legal research, other than law firms, and costs saved by law departments
:
Updated:
Techniques for satisfaction surveys and interviews
:
Updated:
Trustworthy surveys, as defined by Manual for Complex Litigation
:
Updated:
General counsel, compliance functions and reporting (health care)
:
Updated:
The number of patent lawsuits dropped in 2005
:
Updated:
Risk aversion and the principal-agent problem
:
Updated:
Value of freshly-issued US patents compared to cost to obtain
:
Updated:
Patent auctions and value ratings, from Ocean Tomo
:
Updated:
Legal “risk” compared to legal “uncertainty”
:
Updated:
Morrison’s Morsels #10
:
Updated:
Incompetent workers suffer a “troika of cluelessness”
:
Updated:
Licensed legal consultants in New York State (transnational lawyers)
:
Updated:
Internet availability of legal research resources
:
Updated:
Tracking internal lawyer time and charging clients: pros and cons
:
Updated:
No IP department is an island
:
Updated:
Law firms and patterns of billing for travel time
:
Updated:
Outside counsel and use of a company’s name for promotional purposes
:
Updated:
Methods to fertilize creative thinking
:
Updated:
A bill auditor’s report in a patent infringement case
:
Updated:
Enterprise risk management (ERM) and legal risks
:
Updated:
Total costs, direct and indirect of health-care litigation: “as much as $200 billion”
:
Updated:
Lawyer time on Google for legal resources
:
Updated:
Relative costs of lawyers
:
Updated:
Hybrid billing arrangements: blended and full rates
:
Updated:
Law departments can’t directly track all costs that the company incurs for legal services
:
Updated:
Use rolling averages to show changes more tellingly
:
Updated:
Some practice area metrics for workload
:
Updated:
Urban legend metric on e-mail analysis costs for discovery?
:
Updated:
Offshore legal services from India — $61 million in 2005
:
Updated:
Social network diversity compared to demographic diversity
:
Updated:
The spreading acceptance of electronic billing
:
Updated:
If the law department needs shaking up, the CEO should hire a general counsel from outside
:
Updated:
“Intelligent agents” and Enterprise Risk Monitors – startling, star gazing, or Star Trek?
:
Updated:
Contract life-cycle management (CLCM) software
:
Updated:
Good advice on finding and managing legal advisors across borders
:
Updated:
Top five reasons law departments haven’t implemented alternative billing arrangements
:
Updated:
For dispersed law departments, select virtual teams for tasks to benefit the department (Halliburton)
:
Updated:
Hallmarks of a progressive performance management system
:
Updated:
Early case assessment (ECA) spelled out
:
Updated:
“Unified content management” – the generation beyond classic document management
:
Updated:
Save money by hiring experienced paralegals rather than junior lawyers
:
Updated:
Brought EEOC work inside (with HR) and saved $200,000
:
Updated:
Snowball surveys of client satisfaction or customer satisfaction
:
Updated:
Humans, and in-house counsel, are hard-wired genetically to detect unfairness
:
Updated:
An extranet for litigation management and $6 million saved by convergence (Tyco)
:
Updated:
Patent counsel and value delivered
:
Updated:
Contracts: process review, simplification, early intervention, and formal approvals (Navigation Technologies)
:
Updated:
Be primary to a regional firm rather than tertiary to a national powerhouse
:
Updated:
Decentralized legal reporting at General Electric
:
Updated:
Everything revolves around the zodiac of people
:
Updated:
360º evaluations (multi-source) and some excellent background material
:
Updated:
Build on strengths of a lawyer or repair weaknesses?
:
Updated:
“Past behavioral interviews” (PBI) to select the best lawyer to hire
:
Updated:
“Executive intelligence” as the best predictor of in-house counsel managerial success
:
Updated:
Normalizing data: defined and an example from a prosecutor’s office
:
Updated:
Achtung! Mark my words, but don’t get the wrong imPrussian
:
Updated:
A Wikipedia for lawyers courtesy of Cornell University
:
Updated:
Hiring racehorses into a department paddock
:
Updated:
Benchmarks for prosecuting attorney’s offices
:
Updated:
The cost of licensing and staffing a matter management system
:
Updated:
Technology support per law department staff: about 1:35
:
Updated:
Three categories of lawyers at Royal Dutch Shell
:
Updated:
Information asymmetry and outside counsel management
:
Updated:
Should laws department be responsible for records retention? Policies? Enforcement? Training?
:
Updated:
Periodic risk assessments
:
Updated:
Hedonic treadmills and client or employee satisfaction
:
Updated:
Spending on compliance and ethics programs, and compared to legal spending
:
Updated:
Develop “reference classes” to help you think through important decisions
:
Updated:
Cost transparency initiatives
:
Updated:
International M&A – rules of thumb on costs and staffing
:
Updated:
Law department relationship to ethics and compliance heads
:
Updated:
How far will law departments influence management decisions of their key firms?
:
Updated:
For some general counsel, their time goes to cultivating relations with regulators
:
Updated:
Work analysis tool to anticipate future needs for legal services
:
Updated:
The fly in the ointment as law-department intranets gather cobwebs
:
Updated:
Emotional intelligence quotient (EQ) may drain away as lawyers rise
:
Updated:
Majors by business unit and minors by substantive area of excellence (Ascential Software)
:
Updated:
The culture three-step: law department dancing with client (Philips)
:
Updated:
Morrison’s Morsels (aka M.L.E. Posts) #9
:
Updated:
IP lawyers per R&D spending, and a plateau effect for R&D spending
:
Updated:
Can in-house counsel distinguish between quality and mediocre law firms? (Dec. 20, 2005
:
Updated:
Real options analysis for law departments (Dec. 20, 2005)
:
Updated:
Train clients on how to get the most from in-house counsel
:
Updated:
Online “futures market” for litigation
:
Updated:
Malpractice charges against in-house lawyers
:
Updated:
Has legal spending on compliance and corporate governance soared like IT spending?
:
Updated:
Staff reductions resulting from law department installing document management (shared services)
:
Updated:
Law departments should not lead crisis-management teams
:
Updated:
Methodological drawbacks of multiple choice questions
:
Updated:
Administrator compensation: approximately 10 percent more per year of education
:
Updated:
Training clients: three methods include classroom, online and paper
:
Updated:
Three experiences from UTC about alternative billing
:
Updated:
Beware “active inertia” in your law department!
:
Updated:
“Contented” attorneys in-house face the specter of retirement
:
Updated:
Networks of international law firms: 50,000 plus lawyers and 800 plus member firms
:
Updated:
General counsel groups by industry (PELF and Venture Capital)
:
Updated:
General counsel of foreign-based companies have to explain the US legal system and its costs
:
Updated:
Managing all those people! GCs and the number of reports to them in large departments
:
Updated:
British Petroleum’s (BP) law department and its online compliance and ethics training
:
Updated:
Think of law departments in terms of “learning organizations”
:
Updated:
The “cutting edge” and execution for law departments trying to stay sharp
:
Updated:
Consequences of understating total legal spending and hourly cost
:
Updated:
Can partnering lead to complacency?
:
Updated:
Estimates of how General Counsel allocate their time
:
Updated:
Ethnographic studies needed of corporate counsel at work
:
Updated:
Billing-rate changes not by 12 months but by project experience
:
Updated:
What are the major questions we can’t answer, yet, about law department management?
:
Updated:
The nitty-gritty details of matter budgets
:
Updated:
Tours of duty outside the law department (or before?)
:
Updated:
Flat fees can also apply per stage, activity or milestone
:
Updated:
Is “law-department strategic plan” an oxymoron?
:
Updated:
A journalist’s view of law-department “trends,” “best practices” and “ho hums”
:
Updated:
Collect data only if you are going to study it and act on it
:
Updated:
A manual to explain how a law department collects and uses metrics (BellSouth)
:
Updated:
Competitive bidding for major litigation
:
Updated:
Law firms should worry when a new GC (or head of a practice) takes over
:
Updated:
Dispute management and relation to price/earnings ratio (P/E)
:
Updated:
Legal intensity partly determined by an industry’s regulatory complexity
:
Updated:
No Shell game, it’s “functional reporting” for 650 lawyers in 50 countries
:
Updated:
Knowledge management courtesy of implicit search software and smart folders
:
Updated:
Post mortems (after action reviews) and lessons learned from litigation
:
Updated:
Speed time to resolution (lower cycle time) and shave outside counsel fees
:
Updated:
Will Chief Risk Officers (CRO) outrank Chief Legal Officers?
:
Updated:
Unintended results of instant messaging: the evidence of presence
:
Updated:
Titles, offices, compensation and other goods that are positional
:
Updated:
Cost and productivity savings from distributed offices (telecommuting)
:
Updated:
Wildly varying estimates of litigation liability (Merck): relation to budgets and outside fees
:
Updated:
Total cost to resolve (TCR) and TCR+ to include inside counsel time (TCR+) (BellSouth)
:
Updated:
Being with people we like and law department productivity
:
Updated:
Know Thyself, and the Delphi method (nominal group technique)
:
Updated:
M.L.E. Post 8 – well-mannered additions to previous posts (Morrison’s Morsels)
:
Updated:
Scenario thinking can help a law department prepare for the future
:
Updated:
A blog comment on my post about client satisfaction surveys raising expectations
:
Updated:
In-house counsel should not be simply the “gatekeeper” between outside counsel and corporate clients
:
Updated:
Margin of error in surveys (client satisfaction, employee morale, values)
:
Updated:
Data visualization software and its potential for law departments
:
Updated:
Research showing that ADR-favoring law departments spend less and achieve more
:
Updated:
Executives’ views of the law department compared to other staff functions
:
Updated:
Law, a support function, and functions supporting it (IT, HR, Finance, etc.)
:
Updated:
Communication time wasters for senior lawyers
:
Updated:
Collars to prevent either side from being bitten by fixed fees
:
Updated:
Mission statements – a standard version
:
Updated:
Use hours of lawyer work, not amounts paid, when competitively bidding work
:
Updated:
Topsy-turvy pyramids of commodity, commercial, and complex legal services
:
Updated:
Assembling virtual teams from lawyers at several firms to work on the same matter (Cisco
:
Updated:
A rare situation where customizing a matter management system makes sense
:
Updated:
Are there managerial differences between women and men general counsel?
:
Updated:
Catastrophe modeling tools and their application to legal risks
:
Updated:
If groups rate Boards and corporate governance, then why don’t they rate law departments?
:
Updated:
Bending the work rules: “flex-place,” “flex-time,” and job sharing
:
Updated:
Diversity efforts within law departments aim less at women, more at minorities
:
Updated:
Invite a partner or two from your key law firms to a collective gathering
:
Updated:
Unfavorable settlements if the law department is pressured to reduce law firm costs
:
Updated:
Broadband your compensation structure, for flexibility and administrative benefits
:
Updated:
“Hire the lawyer but attach to the firm,” especially large firms
:
Updated:
Each of your major firms should appoint a relationship partner
:
Updated:
Productivity techniques for handling contracts
:
Updated:
The special problem of lawyer specialization (Nov. 30)
:
Updated:
Everyone clamors for more communication within the department, right?
:
Updated:
IP litigation with what type of law firm
:
Updated:
Client satisfaction scores for the entire law department or for portions?
:
Updated:
A median of the minds: to be above average, know what mean means (and some other stats)
:
Updated:
Law departments, take note of non-traditional law firm offerings (CPA)
:
Updated:
Law departments as profit centers: eBay for IP
:
Updated:
Mind mapping software shows the way through complicated agreements and ideas
:
Updated:
Percentage of graduates of top-ranked law schools in law departments
:
Updated:
Bloom’s taxonomy of cognitive outcomes, legal thinking, and competency maps
:
Updated:
Cost-benefit analysis as a goal for law department research
:
Updated:
Supervising in-house lawyers, pushing noodles, catching the wind, and finding gold at the end of rainbows
:
Updated:
The web, metrics and patents (The Nexus and the On-Line Branch)
:
Updated:
Companies without an in-house lawyer might consider an “outsourced general counsel”
:
Updated:
Step-wise rate reductions and the tug of war
:
Updated:
Acronyms, jargon and corp-speak – not plains in the neck for law departments
:
Updated:
Most law departments locate the majority of their lawyers in one place
:
Updated:
Flat fees for all appellate work and employment-related position statements
:
Updated:
Recoveries should in part be applied to the law department’s external expenses
:
Updated:
Law department budgets from the top down or the bottom up
:
Updated:
You CAN manage what you cannot measure.
:
Updated:
Competimates – law firms vs.w/ law departments
:
Updated:
When law departments cut costs, do firms deserve any minimum level of profitability?
:
Updated:
Weighting the various determinants of bonuses
:
Updated:
Items of note from Cisco’s in-house litigation document infrastructure
:
Updated:
Surveys of clients: hardcopy or electronic – or both?
:
Updated:
M.L.E. Post (7) – politely adding to previous posts
:
Updated:
Does asking clients to assess the department raise their expectations for the future? Yes
:
Updated:
Imposing staffing profiles and staffing models on outside counsel
:
Updated:
Unusual questions on client satisfaction survey: who is client and what services sought
:
Updated:
Online compensation data for in-house lawyer positions
:
Updated:
Law firm rate increases and the link to productivity increases
:
Updated:
Surveys for law departments and the “focusing illusion”
:
Updated:
MFN (Most favored nation pricing) — from problematic to impossible
:
Updated:
Stitching up morale in a law department slashed by 20 percent (Reuters)
:
Updated:
A patronizing British attitude toward law departments
:
Updated:
Employment litigation costs and frequency
:
Updated:
USF&G moved to higher price firms in 1993 and saving $50 million
:
Updated:
Non-US legal services: laxer standards of conflict of interest, open cubicles
:
Updated:
Growth rate of Google’s law department and a searching analysis of ROI
:
Updated:
Average litigation cost per D&O claim (1996)
:
Updated:
Engagement in a law department, as compared to satisfaction and morale
:
Updated:
M. L. E. Post –(6) Add-ons to previous posts
:
Updated:
How can you use your internal cost per lawyer hour (about $190 for large departments)?
:
Updated:
A law department’s “culture”: smoke and mirrors or life and death
:
Updated:
Incessant incremental initiatives improve on incandescent innovation
:
Updated:
Experience sampling in a law department – insights into productivity, etc.
:
Updated:
Tools used by law departments to measure law firm performance
:
Updated:
Assigning lawyers to specific areas of expertise
:
Updated:
No standard measures of risks or risk management (meta post on legal risks)
:
Updated:
The meaning of “retainer” billing, compared to flat or fixed fee billing
:
Updated:
A working definition of “major litigation” (Altria)
:
Updated:
Timekeepers per law firm used
:
Updated:
$1 billion+ annual legal spend on claims and performance management (AIG)
:
Updated:
Rating law-firm measurement processes and systems of law departments
:
Updated:
Law-firm performance management data and its uses by law departments
:
Updated:
A future where UK law firms go public or are acquired by companies….
:
Updated:
Commoditization of common legal services as the web fills with free guidance
:
Updated:
Why it may become harder to recruit talented lawyers for law departments
:
Updated:
Shifting criteria for evaluating new law firms and incumbent law firms
:
Updated:
“Lean Six Sigma” at Xerox
:
Updated:
Forced ranking of lawyers – arguments for carrying it out
:
Updated:
In-house counsel as “knowledge workers” – how to get better performance
:
Updated:
Total cost of outcomes (TCO) and techniques for litigation management
:
Updated:
Metaphors of managers – they shape how general counsel think
:
Updated:
Offshoring meta-post and Motorola
:
Updated:
Fractals, power laws, bell curves and soaring litigation costs
:
Updated:
When the urge to converge of law departments goads the urge to merge of law firms
:
Updated:
South Africa and diversity in-house and with external counsel
:
Updated:
Restructuring Motorola’s patent function – a “prep and prosc” sub-group
:
Updated:
IP audits, cost savings and the role of inside counsel (Dow Chemical)
:
Updated:
Four attributes for lawyers: competency, IQ, personality, and emotional intelligence (Ei)
:
Updated:
A panel of four firms; difference between “corporate” and “commercial” work (RHM)
:
Updated:
Large companies typically saw outside counsel spend last year increase 15.7 percent?
:
Updated:
Law departments may change channels from referrals within law firm networks
:
Updated:
Microsoft, patent litigation, and its $100 million a year expenditure
:
Updated:
As GC tenure goes up, CEO involvement with law firm selection and grading goes up?
:
Updated:
In high stakes matters, 52% of CEOs involved in choice of outside counsel, and 20% decide
:
Updated:
Consider quantifying risks and their likelihood
:
Updated:
Setting minimum experience requirements for associates working on matters
:
Updated:
A paradox of specialization yet much more outside counsel
:
Updated:
Lots of lawyering at 100 per square foot (SEI Investment)
:
Updated:
Maximum hours acceptable to bill per month: Altria’s 200
:
Updated:
The budget challenges of ex pat lawyers
:
Updated:
Hierarchy of titles: “Associate” over “Assistant” General Counsel
:
Updated:
Human resources (HR) representative for the law department
:
Updated:
The myth of “buyers’ market” for high end legal services
:
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Large numbers of law firm timekeepers billing to matters
:
Updated:
Make “risk management decisions” inside, buy product or process legal services
:
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Measuring total hours of legal advice given
:
Updated:
Rarely do corporate law departments hire directly from law school
:
Updated:
Do clients “open their purse strings” to pay for more good in-house lawyers?
:
Updated:
Matter budgets from law firms spreading (?), but are they effective for controlling costs?
:
Updated:
Continuing Legal Education should be Continuing Business Education
:
Updated:
Largest law departments serve governmental agencies
:
Updated:
Domino’s policies on law firm budgets, especially for class actions
:
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Flat fee per case (old Walmart) differs from flat fee for group of cases
:
Updated:
General counsel should broaden their business experience
:
Updated:
Law firm fixed surcharges increase in popularity among law firms
:
Updated:
Microsoft® and General Motors on e-billing
:
Updated:
Standardized practices regarding outside counsel
:
Updated:
Title simplification, yes; but “Corporate Secretary” still needed by law
:
Updated:
A single rate structure imposed on multiple law firms; sensible?
:
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Law departments should pay for meetings within firms, but scrutinize the bills
:
Updated:
Pitifully few departments deliberately and quantitatively assess their law firms
:
Updated:
Reporting of compliance groups: one-third to the general counsel
:
Updated:
Mission statements - strategies plans and goals
:
Updated:
Online legal resources: Casemaker Consortium and Thecorporatecounsel.net
:
Updated:
Fixed-fee bidding processes should state and narrow assumptions
:
Updated:
In-house attorney-client privilege split in Europe
:
Updated:
What European law departments want from their external counsel
:
Updated:
Low-balling fee arrangements reach unprofitable rates
:
Updated:
Real-time client access to everything on a firm’s system, but to what end?
:
Updated:
Detailed guidelines for how to pay bills
:
Updated:
M. L. E. Post (5) – More Lines on Entries courteously adding to my previous posts
:
Updated:
Chief IP Officer
:
Updated:
“Most favored nation” (MFN) rates from law firms – quixotic quicksand
:
Updated:
Administrative time in-house squeezing out substantive lawyering time?
:
Updated:
Request a summary on large outside counsel bills of the major cost drivers
:
Updated:
Bumbles that get law firms fired (expensive, silent and stupid)
:
Updated:
Charging back external counsel costs falls short of creating market discipline
:
Updated:
Nine low-cost morale boosters (no kidding)
:
Updated:
Low importance on client satisfaction scores could result from poor performance
:
Updated:
Contrarian ideas on the value of outside counsel who have industry experience
:
Updated:
Laurence Simons and Hildebrandt benchmark survey of law departments in Europe
:
Updated:
“Better to light a candle than curse the darkness” – metrics are better than none
:
Updated:
Morale in a law department: symptoms of underlying causes
:
Updated:
Class-action metrics: served on and certified against large companies
:
Updated:
Diversity and corporate decisions about which outside counsel to retain
:
Updated:
External spend data where a company has suffered reputation damage
:
Updated:
Litigation matters per corporate counsel – 10.2?
:
Updated:
Time-to-resolution by lawsuit type – usually well less than a year
:
Updated:
Percentage of trials that go to verdict – 40% in US
:
Updated:
Adversarial proceedings in a year against large companies (lawsuits, arbitrations, and regulatory)
:
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Large companies suing –in any given year a quarter do not
:
Updated:
Large companies and the number of lawsuits they face; litigation case loads
:
Updated:
Dubious data from Fulbright’s litigation survey: 0.53% of revenue on average spent on litigation
:
Updated:
Durability of hourly billing: an article explaining why the old standby stands tall
:
Updated:
Client satisfaction scores interpreted with a gap analysis
:
Updated:
Reverse second a paralegal to a law firm to learn a niche area (immigration)
:
Updated:
How general counsel identify potential new hires
:
Updated:
Lawyers as contract managers, but not in the law department (FMC Technologies)
:
Updated:
Decision-tree risk analysis software to analyze law suits (FMC Technologies)
:
Updated:
Ring out the praise for bell curves!
:
Updated:
Litigation counsel retains local counsel within its own budget (FMC Technologies)
:
Updated:
Including disbursements in law firms’ fee rates (FMC Technologies)
:
Updated:
Explain to clients the costs of litigation in a presentation, and have them sign off
:
Updated:
Legal issues and legal department management: privilege, malpractice, fee shifting, unauthorized practice
:
Updated:
Dearth of law school professors who study law department management (Oct. 23, 2005)
:
Updated:
GCs: corporate executive first, lawyer and manager distant second (Oct. 23, 2005)
:
Updated:
Did Krispy Kreme’s donuts go nuts because there was no general counsel?
:
Updated:
The larger the law firm, the more overhead you are paying for
:
Updated:
One third of the time, conflicts mean you can’t hire the lawyer you want at a major firm!
:
Updated:
Who – inside or outside – is ultimately responsible for electronic discovery?
:
Updated:
Are 40% of CEOs “very involved” in selection of outside counsel?
:
Updated:
Business casual dress in law departments: Morrison’s iron-clad rule
:
Updated:
Networking to answer the client who claims something is “standard for the industry”
:
Updated:
Have your IT support person meet with the IT departments of your major firms
:
Updated:
‘“Loser pays” doesn’t” – Herb Kritzer; little frivolous litigation
:
Updated:
E-mail exchanges that create potentially greater legal risks than the original subject risk
:
Updated:
Where should compliance report if not to law?
:
Updated:
Mission statement impossible? Three tests if you must draft one
:
Updated:
Neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) – Not Legally Practical?
:
Updated:
Attenex Corporation’s proportionality framework for e-discovery projects
:
Updated:
Psychometric instruments as amusement more than talent tools
:
Updated:
55 person consulting group in Faegre & Benson helps clients with document strategies
:
Updated:
Extranets used other than in major litigation
:
Updated:
Contract management software (Fair Isaac Corp.)
:
Updated:
The department’s budget should cascade down to practice groups
:
Updated:
Hiring settlement counsel to complement litigation counsel
:
Updated:
Should you ask for the total billable hours of lawyers working on your matters?
:
Updated:
Hailing a taxonomy – critical core components of a knowledge management system
:
Updated:
Raytheon sics Six Sigma on handling of bankruptcy notices
:
Updated:
M.L.E. Post (4) – politely adding on to earlier posts
:
Updated:
Two obstacles for corporate lawyers who want to telecommute
:
Updated:
Communication tools for managing lawyers in virtual law departments
:
Updated:
Making decisions: aside from results, improve process and match to results
:
Updated:
Patent expert witnesses team with law departments seeking patent revenue
:
Updated:
Deep latent desire to telecommute or a biased survey question?
:
Updated:
A law department’s people don’t deserve to be called its “most valuable resource”
:
Updated:
Silliness about doing rocket science all the time as the primary goal for in-house lawyers
:
Updated:
Six degrees of separation as a practice-benchmarking asset
:
Updated:
Risk aversion and “scheissenbedauern”
:
Updated:
How do you calculate an accurate fully-loaded internal cost per lawyer hour?
:
Updated:
Rankings of law firms explains less than ratings of law firms
:
Updated:
Online availability of commoditized legal services – keep holding your breath
:
Updated:
Kudos for several law departments that run sophisticated technology
:
Updated:
Law departments, please complete your fair share of those ubiquitous surveys
:
Updated:
Structured settlements and in-house litigators
:
Updated:
Single points of contact (Dr. SPOC)
:
Updated:
Collective law department activity meta-post: benchmark, groups, cost-sharing
:
Updated:
Prompt payment meta-post: restricted applicability, retainer, and AP limitations
:
Updated:
Creating your own time-series benchmarks
:
Updated:
Allocating budget cuts to division of units
:
Updated:
Offshoring to India at 10% of the US law firm cost
:
Updated:
Purchase power parity and global compensation costs
:
Updated:
Ex pat costs: beyond money to professional development, client satisfaction
:
Updated:
Politics and poison in succession competition
:
Updated:
Even with a strategic plan, defects in planning and execution often drag it down
:
Updated:
Job design, the key to high performing in-house counsel
:
Updated:
What to do if some areas of the world where you have lawyers have no paralegals
:
Updated:
How to assign litigation lawyers
:
Updated:
Multiple roles of some general counsel
:
Updated:
Passing the baton from one relationship partner to the next – law department approval
:
Updated:
Litigation contingency planning to speed discovery, save money, and reduce angst
:
Updated:
Separating litigators from business unit lawyers – a poor practice
:
Updated:
Myths cherished by law firms about law departments
:
Updated:
Should law departments encourage partners to leave firms, and take on a volume work?
:
Updated:
Total legal spending and payments for insured litigated matters
:
Updated:
In-house litigation lawyers and their influence over sizeable corporate cash
:
Updated:
Percentage of lawyers in Forbes 400 almost doubles in 20 years
:
Updated:
Conflicting economic models for law departments
:
Updated:
Forum shopping and ways to lessen such nefarious client shenanigans
:
Updated:
Competitive bids: should you exclude a good idea by an unsuccessful bidder?
:
Updated:
Law department practices: leaders gain, laggers lose
:
Updated:
The Johari window and law department self-awareness
:
Updated:
E-liminating e-discovery e-xpenses
:
Updated:
Comparative costs of Indian outsource services (patents)
:
Updated:
M.L.E. Post (3): polite additions to earlier posts
:
Updated:
Hiring external facilitators for important meetings
:
Updated:
A partial 180º evaluation of direct reports
:
Updated:
Outside counsel budget variance year to year
:
Updated:
ACC 2004 survey data on legal research expenditures by US corporate law departments
:
Updated:
Odd metrics from the ACC 2004 survey of US corporate counsel
:
Updated:
ACC 2004 census of US corporate counsel – 71,702 in 23,540 corporations
:
Updated:
“No one else but the general counsel …”
:
Updated:
Unfulfilled desired by in-house counsel to telecommute
:
Updated:
Is 1,850 chargeable hours a year a reasonable estimate for in-house counsel?
:
Updated:
Firing a firm that under-staffs matters
:
Updated:
“High impact learning maps” strike down passé “competency maps”
:
Updated:
My two most enjoyable law department retreat activities
:
Updated:
Are we capable of understanding law departments?
:
Updated:
In-sourcing legal work? Rapid growth of the Wal-Mart legal staff
:
Updated:
Almost 20% minority relationship partners for Walmart’s law firms
:
Updated:
RSS could give immediate updates to law departments from law firms
:
Updated:
Trademarks play second fiddle to patents
:
Updated:
The 19 lives of law department documents
:
Updated:
In-house programs to help lawyers and paralegals write gooder
:
Updated:
Marketing at the firm versus managing clients of the department
:
Updated:
The margin-slicing pursuit of celebrity corporate clients
:
Updated:
Arbitraging lawyer compensation in different countries
:
Updated:
Secondments: Look minutely at our non-hire agreements (they’re weak)
:
Updated:
Offering law firms publicity in return for favorable pricing
:
Updated:
Matching activities of a law department against its company’s goals
:
Updated:
Developing a tool in-house and licensing it out
:
Updated:
Litigation risks of a law department’s knowledge management efforts
:
Updated:
Reasons to consider outsourcing a practice area of a law department
:
Updated:
M.L.E. Post (2)
:
Updated:
Retired general counsel retained as legal consultants
:
Updated:
Setting threshold minima for law department involvement
:
Updated:
Client satisfaction surveys and client perceptions of law department value added
:
Updated:
Law department fees may grow in Europe, even if abating in the US (antitrust)
:
Updated:
Protecting attorney-client privilege when invoice data is sent to accounts payable
:
Updated:
When you should put a matter into your matter management system
:
Updated:
Law departments and a “self-service” model for serving clients
:
Updated:
Flat fee arrangements at Cisco Systems cover about 70 percent of its $75 million spend
:
Updated:
Invoice inflow and time spent on review
:
Updated:
If not prompt payment, what about net 30?
:
Updated:
Early case assessment (ECA) yield 20 percent cost savings
:
Updated:
Forbidden fruit? Disbursements for online legal research?
:
Updated:
Is electronic invoicing for law departments a $2 billion market?
:
Updated:
Best practices are innovative and grabbed; good common practices ignored
:
Updated:
Rule of thumb? Five percent of external spend goes to vendors other than law firms?
:
Updated:
Boutique law firms for document review and dispute resolution
:
Updated:
A Board of Directors decides to converge law firms (Carey International)
:
Updated:
Online market based on expectations for litigation outcomes
:
Updated:
Lay offs of corporate counsel when companies merge (Oracle hard on PeopleSoft)
:
Updated:
Larger law departments account for more innovations
:
Updated:
Light-bulb Innovation compared to trial-and-error emergence
:
Updated:
Myths of matter management systems
:
Updated:
Paying law firms based partly on client satisfaction scores
:
Updated:
Survey results on blended billing rates for departments’ top three firms
:
Updated:
Relative growth of 200 largest US law firms and law departments 1997-2004
:
Updated:
Paralegals should report to the lawyers they support
:
Updated:
B-players plateaued, and so what?
:
Updated:
Blended billing rates and their correlation with law firm size
:
Updated:
Seemingly few and low discounts from firms in one study
:
Updated:
Law departments and Chief Governance Officers
:
Updated:
An index of overall law department effectiveness
:
Updated:
Ranking sources of innovative ideas in law departments
:
Updated:
Communication, understanding and decision-making – mental models
:
Updated:
Create-shared practice groups (communities of interest) within the law departments
:
Updated:
Fixed fee arrangement for litigation (Duquesne Light)
:
Updated:
Specialized roles in law departments
:
Updated:
External indicators of internal lawyer quality
:
Updated:
Costs of document management and litigation support software
:
Updated:
Why law department lawyers loathe tracking their time
:
Updated:
Uncoupling discussions on evaluation and compensation
:
Updated:
Correlation between law firm size and listing in NLJ corporate representation
:
Updated:
Private thoughts on pro-bono publico
:
Updated:
Charging internal time only for particular services (quasi-legal, repetitive)
:
Updated:
Tracking new laws and its effects on business (Countrywide)
:
Updated:
Key to law firm cost control is “staffing patterns and risk/reward decisions” (Citigroup)
:
Updated:
Comment: comparing defense costs to amounts at risk
:
Updated:
European costs in Euros per lawyer hour
:
Updated:
What difference does an equity or non-equity partner mean to a law department?
:
Updated:
Turning a career spotlight on up-and-coming in-house counsel
:
Updated:
Blended rates do not necessarily reduce legal fees
:
Updated:
Currency conversion and invoices from international firms
:
Updated:
Online Dutch auction to provide GE with lowest rates
:
Updated:
Defining a “diverse” lawyer
:
Updated:
M.L.E. Post (My Learnings Extended)
:
Updated:
All law departments think they are unique
:
Updated:
The ultimate metric: total legal spending (TLS) as a percentage of revenue
:
Updated:
Lawyers over-rate their judgment and should use metrics more
:
Updated:
The 80/20 rule and some applications in law departments
:
Updated:
Demographics of US companies and increasing demands on law departments
:
Updated:
Sending hypothetical bills to clients to educate them about litigation expenses
:
Updated:
Evaluating law firm performance and giving hard-data feedback to firms (Royal Bank Canada)
:
Updated:
Having in-house counsel track time (NYC’s law department)
:
Updated:
Streamlining by scanning and reengineering (leases at Food Lion)
:
Updated:
Law firm budgets matched to liability amount and likelihood (importance burn rate)
:
Updated:
Standard terms for frequently-used documents, and what else? (Schering Canada)
:
Updated:
Rules of thumb for contingent fee arrangements when the company sues
:
Updated:
Create an index as part of your client satisfaction project
:
Updated:
Why law department’s use consultants
:
Updated:
Thinking “Out of the Box”
:
Updated:
Process maps lead have lost their way
:
Updated:
Gathering peer general counsel at a conference to discuss management ideas
:
Updated:
Unintended consequences and trade offs of actions taken
:
Updated:
The McKinsey 7S’s framework for analyzing a law department
:
Updated:
Strengths and mostly weaknesses of a SWOT analysis
:
Updated:
Appropriateness of a general counsel seeking to be the CEO’s consigliore (consiglieri)
:
Updated:
Legal guidance needed to deal with forecasted constraints to growth (McKinsey research)
:
Updated:
Departmental logistics of earning discounts for prompt payment to law firms
:
Updated:
Extranets as low-cost tools for law departments. So where are they?
:
Updated:
Articles by Rees Morrison on law department management (2003-2004)
:
Updated:
A law department with a “double solid line matrix reporting system” (TIAA-CREF)
:
Updated:
Model litigation audit checklist
:
Updated:
Litigation staff as a proportion of law department staff
:
Updated:
Complexity of litigation: a way to decide whether it’s increasing
:
Updated:
Separate reporting lines of the CLO and Corporate Secretary (Cadbury Schweppes)
:
Updated:
Six Sigma for law departments (Medco Health Solutions) – deep six it?
:
Updated:
American Red Cross and its client/law department think tank
:
Updated:
Firms and departments blame each other for alternative billing’s failure to take hold
:
Updated:
Lawyer tenure in law departments: seventy (70) years in one law department!!
:
Updated:
The protean scope of the general counsel’s responsibilities – “reputational risk protector”?
:
Updated:
“Human capital” reporting at CMS Cameron McKenna – insights for law departments
:
Updated:
At Microsoft, Government Relations reports to the General Counsel
:
Updated:
Books on law department management – invitation to supplement list
:
Updated:
Government agencies – good Australian policy statement for purchasing legal services
:
Updated:
IT support – less than one for every 24 in-house lawyers
:
Updated:
Do general counsel find law firms by searching the internet?
:
Updated:
$3.3 million of bills reviewed per day for 15 years!
:
Updated:
Quarterly retainers billed and paid in advance. Do law departments stand up and cheer?
:
Updated:
Tiny law departments; huge legal spending
:
Updated:
Understand law firm billing practices and timing to negotiate better terms
:
Updated:
Trackback comment on three posts (ex GCs consult; disclose comp ranges; disengaged GCs)
:
Updated:
Trackback comment on costs of switching counsel
:
Updated:
Mapping and managing legal risks
:
Updated:
In George Orwell style, the ultimate law department mission/vision statement
:
Updated:
Measuring delegation to paralegals
:
Updated:
Voice recognition software and law department productivity – a chimera
:
Updated:
Marriott, convergence, and equal amounts of work sent to each of ten firms
:
Updated:
The seven year itch: scratch the general counsel
:
Updated:
Not so slow rejection of prompt payment discounts?
:
Updated:
Levels of authority for approving bills of outside counsel
:
Updated:
Why the ordeal of year-end accruals
:
Updated:
Rule of thumb? Three quarters of law firms bill monthly on each matter?
:
Updated:
Articles of Rees Morrison (2005) on law department management
:
Updated:
Potential for ploughing back profits by the plaintiffs’ bar
:
Updated:
Spending controls crash into electronic discovery costs
:
Updated:
Exit interviews as one door to improved management
:
Updated:
SOX and intranets — legal departments need to stay take on another task
:
Updated:
Patent litigation favored patentees in 2004 – 40% improvement
:
Updated:
Attorney over-billing and collusion between insurance defense and plaintiff firms
:
Updated:
Myers-Briggs Type Indicator and lawyers as introverts
:
Updated:
Don’t hire a head of litigation!
:
Updated:
Tension between lawyers and risk managers about notifying carriers of cases
:
Updated:
Confusing e-billing capabilities and matter management systems
:
Updated:
Annual “State of the Law Department” Report
:
Updated:
Headcount constraints or cost constraints: the tensions with low-cost lawyers overseas
:
Updated:
Being quoted in the trade press and competitive secrecy
:
Updated:
Easy or hard to show the department’s contribution in dollars? Hard
:
Updated:
Consistent usage of same firms over time – create a map
:
Updated:
What drives up the absolute number of law firms a department retains?
:
Updated:
Consolidated posts on this blog by category
:
Updated:
Which title? Paralegal or legal assistant
:
Updated:
Differences between law firm in blended billing rates
:
Updated:
Invoice approval routing and authorization levels
:
Updated:
Research finds law firms not using paralegals
:
Updated:
“Risk management,” the chameleon all-purpose, no-meaning term
:
Updated:
Indexing performance – explained by applications for U.S. trademark registrations
:
Updated:
Pushing law firms to provide useful performance data
:
Updated:
Transaction costs of transferring ongoing cases to a replacement law firm
:
Updated:
What do we mean by “technology” in law departments?
:
Updated:
Regression analysis: statistics to explain what influences litigation outcomes, and how much
:
Updated:
Game Theory: fools gold for law departments
:
Updated:
Save money by sharing with adverse parties some litigation support costs
:
Updated:
Charging law departments with a facilities (rent-equivalent) cost
:
Updated:
Drawing the line between “pre-law” client groups and lawyers handling matters
:
Updated:
Struggles over who should manage specialty litigation?
:
Updated:
Supplementing matter management systems – client databases
:
Updated:
The bigger the client, the better the law firm team serving it
:
Updated:
Law firm appointed General Counsel by Foster Wheeler
:
Updated:
“Average savings from outside-counsel cost control methods” – dubious data
:
Updated:
“70-80 percent of litigation spending goes to discovery.”
:
Updated:
Advisory panel of key outside counsel partners – Baxter’s Litigation Advisory Board
:
Updated:
“Alignment with clients’ strategy” may be a chimera
:
Updated:
Patents per million of R&D spending galvanizes Microsoft
:
Updated:
Convergence of law firms at Merrill Lynch – reduction of 80% saves $16 million
:
Updated:
Professional development for general counsel – a stint on the business side
:
Updated:
Mistakes in developing mission statements
:
Updated:
Flesh on mission statements – embody its meaning into daily practice
:
Updated:
Charging the costs of stock options and restricted stock grants to the law department
:
Updated:
Secretaries in a pool, working after hours, one specializing in PowerPoint
:
Updated:
GCs who try their hand at consulting
:
Updated:
GC’s office co-located with rest of law department
:
Updated:
80% of European trademark applications to be e-processed by 2010
:
Updated:
7% increase each year typical in inside law department costs?
:
Updated:
Succession planning
:
Updated:
Emotional intelligence best predicts success as a corporate lawyer (!)
:
Updated:
Six Sigma as a tool for law department management
:
Updated:
Implausible ROI calculations – an example
:
Updated:
Should groups of business unit lawyers have their own legal specialists?
:
Updated:
Compliance and law residing within the same function?
:
Updated:
Dual reporting of specialist lawyers
:
Updated:
Data on billing rates of US partners and associates
:
Updated:
Metrics on Chinese law Departments and their spending; legal risks quantified
:
Updated:
Now corporate social responsibility is the law department’s responsibility!
:
Updated:
Wannabe trend, not gonnabe – electronic auctions of parcels of work
:
Updated:
E-billing squints at the small end of the telescope
:
Updated:
Hiding external fees in capitalized expenses
:
Updated:
Hiding external fees with third-party insurance
:
Updated:
Fear of losing good firms if you squeeze their costs
:
Updated:
Five -ten percent discounts as matter of course?
:
Updated:
Best practice survey: legal risk and compliance
:
Updated:
Power-law statistics and law department metrics
:
Updated:
Differences between European company law departments and US company law departments
:
Updated:
Financial services companies to spend nearly $11 billion in 2005 on money laundering compliance
:
Updated:
Total legal spending and payment of legal bills of independent directors
:
Updated:
Successfully embedding numeric goals (balanced scorecards, benchmarks, diversity)
:
Updated:
Independent counsel for the board of directors – many cost issues
:
Updated:
Should total legal spending include changes in share value due to legal events?
:
Updated:
Zagat ratings for law firms – coming to a web site near you soon!
:
Updated:
Data mining by a law department consortium
:
Updated:
Quasi-lawyering tasks – recognize them and root them out
:
Updated:
PDF manual of the law department on the intranet site
:
Updated:
How law firms can help improve law department performance without cutting fees
:
Updated:
Knowledge management: from publishing to brokering
:
Updated:
How can a law department encourage knowledge management contributions?
:
Updated:
What happens if law departments know the financials of a law firm?
:
Updated:
Loss of institutional memory when acquired lawyers never join or promptly leave
:
Updated:
Practice area benchmark metrics – missing in action
:
Updated:
Costs and results of arbitration of employee disputes
:
Updated:
Consolidated posts on this blog by topic
:
Updated:
Insurance against litigation costs – intellectual property coverage
:
Updated:
More than 300 law-related blogs (blawgs); what blawgs offer law departments
:
Updated:
No companies calculate the full internal costs of litigation
:
Updated:
Exemplary practices for law department data collection
:
Updated:
Straddling inside and outside (O’Neill Properties, its primary firm and EVP-GC)
:
Updated:
Lawyers who multitask are less efficient than those who focus on one task at a time
:
Updated:
Two complications of global law departments paying outside counsel (currency and tax)
:
Updated:
Assessing client satisfaction with a repertory grid
:
Updated:
Multi-sourcing: using consortia of law firms to work together on a matter
:
Updated:
Law departments slam law firms (contrary to Corporate Legal Times)
:
Updated:
Suppliers and partners contributing to costs of lawsuit?
:
Updated:
General counsel now “measured by their business acumen”?
:
Updated:
Settlements and judgments as a percentage of outside counsel spending
:
Updated:
Legacy litigation: relative difficulty of managing
:
Updated:
Metrics on law firms paid more than $100,000
:
Updated:
Three most popular methods of controlling outside counsel costs
:
Updated:
Insist that your litigation firms e-file as much as possible
:
Updated:
How to increase the “deep smarts” of inside lawyers
:
Updated:
Estimating the probabilities of a legal event occurring
:
Updated:
Help rank the most publicized recent practices in law departments
:
Updated:
Disclose compensation ranges at each level in the department
:
Updated:
Being a top performer in-house depends on the situation and four dimensions
:
Updated:
Benchmark metrics based on employees; finance total spend as a percentage of revenue
:
Updated:
Multiple roles of corporate counsel
:
Updated:
Inefficiency caused by e-mail and crack-Berries
:
Updated:
The most important best practices are the most difficult to imitate
:
Updated:
Knowledge coaches in law departments
:
Updated:
Spectrum of methods for training clients (and lawyers)
:
Updated:
Retaining former lawyers as temporary on-contract lawyers
:
Updated:
Many “disengaged” general counsel, a Gallup tool suggests
:
Updated:
Invite a facilitator/scribe to an important management meeting
:
Updated:
Number of lawsuits may be flat, but is complexity growing?
:
Updated:
To whom should paralegals and secretaries report?
:
Updated:
Make/buy and the 40/60 split of inside to outside counsel spending
:
Updated:
Hourglass to almond: shifting to more paralegals and fewer secretaries
:
Updated:
Turnover costs of losing a lawyer from the department
:
Updated:
Average costs of Directors & Officers claims, defense and payment
:
Updated:
Do legal ethics require law firms to pass on cost savings?
:
Updated:
Offshoring legal work, including to India — $163 billion market?
:
Updated:
Asian general counsel and their base compensation – huge differences across countries
:
Updated:
Law firm and inside legal costs of SOX compliance
:
Updated:
Hire the firm or hire the lawyer?
:
Updated:
The “Ten Year Rule” for becoming an expert
:
Updated:
Preparing for the retirement of a veteran lawyer
:
Updated:
Underlying assumptions of law departments
:
Updated:
Stress and in-house counsel
:
Updated:
Disadvantages of a “loser pays” judicial system
:
Updated:
State bar membership and the law department’s role
:
Updated:
Management attorneys and their spans of control
:
Updated:
Litigation performance measures
:
Updated:
With client satisfaction scores, RHIP (rank has its privileges)
:
Updated:
Client satisfaction scores adjusted for frequency of legal service use
:
Updated:
Total costs per Canadian law suits
:
Updated:
Normalized law department benchmarks for cities and states – spending per resident
:
Updated:
Case loads of in-house lawyers – survey data from Canada
:
Updated:
Legal arteriosclerosis and lawyers dragging down U.S. productivity
:
Updated:
Canadian law departments increased spending slowly from 1973 through 1994
:
Updated:
SOX legal costs; when should law departments create accounts outside their budget
:
Updated:
Shell Malaysia and law-department initiative overload?
:
Updated:
Pros, and many more cons, of “beauty parades” according to Watson, Farley & Williams
:
Updated:
Law firm associations compared to sprawling, international firms
:
Updated:
Involvement of the general counsel in selecting outside counsel
:
Updated:
Lists of approved outside counsel – necessary but not sufficient
:
Updated:
Attorney-client privilege at risk for in-house counsel not reporting to the general counsel
:
Updated:
Total legal spending should include fines, judgments and settlements; data lacuna
:
Updated:
A humble proposal: client involvement in litigation
:
Updated:
Conflicts of interest principals for law departments regarding law firms
:
Updated:
Hiring partners only
:
Updated:
Cycle time in federal civil court cases (2004) as a benchmark metric
:
Updated:
Jury verdict data skewed high and toward plaintiffs, study finds
:
Updated:
Putting figures to the value of the law department?
:
Updated:
Applying online for U.S. trademarks has gained steady popularity
:
Updated:
The starting point for an outside counsel spending matrix and analysis
:
Updated:
Going beyond lawyers per billion – practice area benchmark metrics
:
Updated:
Translation costs of patents
:
Updated:
Year-on-year changes in law department lawyers – empirical data
:
Updated:
What’s the difference between “Law Department” and “Legal Department?”
:
Updated:
Knowledge management through analysis software
:
Updated:
U.S. exported $3.38 billion in legal services in 2003
:
Updated:
Another law department benchmark: legal costs in terms of sales (profit margin)
:
Updated:
Law department as cost center, but some business development
:
Updated:
Milking Sarbanes-Oxley: merging law and compliance under the CLO
:
Updated:
What is the basis of this offshoring estimate ($1.5 billion of legal work overseas in 2004)?
:
Updated:
Joint technology development by several law departments
:
Updated:
Budgets of law firms – crucial and more frequent in the final weeks of a law suit
:
Updated:
Schadenfreude when your star report is touted as an up and comer
:
Updated:
When general counsel get called by a journalist about departmental operations
:
Updated:
Monte Carlo technique for understanding the range of financial outcomes
:
Updated:
Change management (participation, training, and documentation at the NLRB)
:
Updated:
Complexity of legal services (retrospective insight but prospect gaming)
:
Updated:
Case study of segmenting matters by seriousness (NLRB unfair labor practices)
:
Updated:
Five myths about changing behavior
:
Updated:
Boosting the skills of in-house lawyers (Philip Morris Asia)
:
Updated:
A GC’s critical period – when the CEO is removed
:
Updated:
One out of ten European law departments have formal complaint mechanisms
:
Updated:
Benchmarking – metrics, practices or both
:
Updated:
Standards of service and service level agreements (SLAs)
:
Updated:
Don’t minimize legal risk, identify, size, and match it
:
Updated:
Scrutinizing wannabe new ideas in law department management
:
Updated:
Tools business executives use to improve the performance of their organizations (Bain survey)
:
Updated:
Turnover costs of lawyers who leave the law department
:
Updated:
Knowledge management statistics but poorly managed knowledge
:
Updated:
Savings from e-billing review, and projecting savings more generally
:
Updated:
Executive development courses for high-potential counsel
:
Updated:
By sharing with opponents, reduce discovery copying costs?
:
Updated:
In the future for law departments, will two score huge, international firms remain?
:
Updated:
Cash advances against lawsuit recoveries
:
Updated:
Figuring out the net present economics (value or cost) of a lawsuit
:
Updated:
Patents awarded to the U.S. Government in 2004
:
Updated:
Required IP audits will make in-house lawyers pull their SOX up
:
Updated:
Smart law firms, paltry innovation, but who’s to blame?
:
Updated:
Culture integration – the steepest slope for global legal functions to climb
:
Updated:
Frequency of departments “firing” law firms (2004 European In-House Counsel Sentiment Survey)
:
Updated:
Forced ranking of lawyers in a department – a highly-problematic practice
:
Updated:
Four myths debunked about quality of life for in-house practitioners
:
Updated:
Yet, total legal spending as a percent of revenue declines with company size
:
Updated:
Event studies and the share-price effects of patent litigation
:
Updated:
Litigation costs beyond counsel fees and disbursements – indirect and internal
:
Updated:
Patent litigation redux reduxed
:
Updated:
NAILM, litigation management and bad blood with insurance defense firms
:
Updated:
Prompt payment doesn’t inspire cost consciousness in law firms, even if they give discounts
:
Updated:
“Corporate counsel lawyers’ job satisfaction highest among lawyers” (circa 1990)
:
Updated:
ROI from proprietary bill review services and products (Allegient Systems)
:
Updated:
Should inside advising counsel also handle the dispute that arises later?
:
Updated:
External counsel and five conflict of interest puzzles
:
Updated:
Patent litigation costs redux
:
Updated:
Spreading CLE knowledge to the rest of the law department
:
Updated:
Two limits of intuition
:
Updated:
The “Dark Side” of partnering with key law firms
:
Updated:
Lawyers based in Europe – second languages (Eastman Kodak)
:
Updated:
Reply to all client calls within 24 hours!
:
Updated:
Seven common causes of team breakdowns
:
Updated:
The First Great Myth Of Legal Management Is That It Exists
:
Updated:
Budget matters only as far as your headlights can shine
:
Updated:
Chronic under-use of computer capabilities by in-house lawyers
:
Updated:
Three key information failures and law department disasters
:
Updated:
How to determine the relative effectiveness of cost control practices
:
Updated:
Ranking the effectiveness of 14 knowledge management techniques
:
Updated:
The cottage industry (other than law firms) doing business with law departments
:
Updated:
To tackle law firm billing, grasp the firm’s compensation system
:
Updated:
Voting software and its many uses by law departments
:
Updated:
Free lawyer morale and client satisfaction surveys available online
:
Updated:
Abolish mandatory contract review by the legal department
:
Updated:
Myers-Briggs – lawyer scores compared to scores of all adults
:
Updated:
Average age of lawyers in a department (35 in one large department)
:
Updated:
Lawyers moving into business roles – a high failure rate?
:
Updated:
Using a business expert for project management in huge lawsuits
:
Updated:
Will the wave of cost cutting wash away law departments?
:
Updated:
To-do yourself to success, with a 70% boost!
:
Updated:
British “panels” and American “preferred law firms”
:
Updated:
European general counsel are becoming more strategic, and risk managers
:
Updated:
Law departments and attitudes toward hiring the 30 behemoth firms with 1,000+ lawyers
:
Updated:
Difficulties with Evaluating Outside Counsel
:
Updated:
Improving Morale – Brown Bag Lunches
:
Updated:
A Common Outside-Counsel Budget Challenge – Adjustments
:
Updated:
Lonely at the Top? Coaches for General Counsel
:
Updated:
European Law Firms and Electronic Billing
:
Updated:
A Minimum Amount Necessary for Competitive Bidding
:
Updated:
Management Tools Used by General Counsel
:
Updated:
Managing knowledge and thinking styles of lawyers
:
Updated:
“Mission Critical” goals but not critical thinking in the survey
:
Updated:
Systemic bias in surveys of law departments
:
Updated:
Perhaps the globalization of legal issues has been exaggerated?
:
Updated:
Legal department benchmarks compared to benchmarks of IT, Finance, and HR
:
Updated:
Rotating lawyer through an administrative post
:
Updated:
Compare the billing rates of your key firms to those of peer firms
:
Updated:
Employee satisfaction surveys and response rates
:
Updated:
SMART goals for in-house counsel are dumb
:
Updated:
Lawsuits per billion of revenue – an actionable metric?
:
Updated:
When can you justify hiring another lawyer?
:
Updated:
Are mission statements a mission impossible?
:
Updated:
Posted rules for using legal-department conference rooms
:
Updated:
Benefits from convergence beyond cost savings and administrative ease
:
Updated:
Lackluster response levels by law firms to requests for proposals
:
Updated:
Demise of the Association of Consultants to Law Departments (ACLD)
:
Updated:
Innovations and initiatives correlate to size of law departments
:
Updated:
Average of 30 minutes to complete government’s non-litigation budget form
:
Updated:
Stanton Marris’ Energy Index® and assessing the level of a law department’s engagement
:
Updated:
How do we measure productivity and what are the relative contributors to it (especially technology)?
:
Updated:
Clues to whether technology increases a law department’s productivity?
:
Updated:
The survivor bias and law department best practices
:
Updated:
An analogy for management initiatives – comparing them to legal advice
:
Updated:
Choice theory for law departments
:
Updated:
“Six metrics every litigation manager should implement”
:
Updated:
How should law departments respond to a merger by one of its primary firms?
:
Updated:
Unbundling ancillary services from law firms
:
Updated:
The new GC from outside as the savior?
:
Updated:
Succession Planning and Sabbaticals
:
Updated:
Corporate staff size, financial performance – and law departments?
:
Updated:
Quantifying levels within departments to compare structure
:
Updated:
Employee morale surveys: much less common than client satisfaction surveys
:
Updated:
Integrating Data from Matter Management (MMS) and IP Management Systems
:
Updated:
Phone survey by NERA in November 2001 on legal spending
:
Updated:
Reducing the number of firms retained usually means increasing their size and cost structure
:
Updated:
Weed-whacking litigation costs: arbitration clauses, staffing, and digesting transcripts
:
Updated:
Absence of paralegals throws off international staffing metrics
:
Updated:
A plethora of conferences with topics on law department management; some Rees carping
:
Updated:
Costs of patent litigation, and some questions about data
:
Updated:
Risk management – sure, but how does the law department actually do it?
:
Updated:
In-house productivity muted by meetings?
:
Updated:
Artificial intelligence software may nibble away at lawyers
:
Updated:
Do Search Firms Bias Inflate Compensation Benchmarks?
:
Updated:
Inventory Your Management Initiatives
:
Updated:
Can a Law Firm Help You with Technology Support?
:
Updated:
Choices Between Succession and New Blood from Outside
:
Updated:
Avoiding a Two-Tier System of Distinctions (Lawyers vs Other Professionals)
:
Updated:
Using Law School Students as Interns
:
Updated:
Law department retreats (off-sites) and Morrison’s rule of three
:
Updated:
Weighting Responses to Client Satisfaction Surveys
:
Updated:
Has Total Legal Spending Declined, and Law Departments Shrunk?
:
Updated:
Case studies as means to spread awareness of legal and compliance risks
:
Updated:
Temporary Assignments of Senior Lawyers
:
Updated:
A Modest Proposal To Improve Law Firm Budgets on Matters
:
Updated:
The Missing Metric – Productivity
:
Updated:
Document Assembly Coming Apart?
:
Updated:
Another GC Group Formed, in the UK
:
Updated:
Concentrate spending instead of converging law firms
:
Updated:
Overhead cost cuts by generalist consulting firms – bad news for law departments
:
Updated:
No COLA Differences When Comparing Compensation Levels in an Industry
:
Updated:
Title Simplification? A Passe Idea
:
Updated:
Benchmark comparisons to defend, not to figure out what to change
:
Updated:
Lag and lead times in outside counsel spending
:
Updated:
Are there limits to what good paralegals can do?
:
Updated:
Intuition and the Decisions of Law Department Managers
:
Updated:
Consider Doing a Needs Assessment
:
Updated:
Should Law Departments Also Manage Contracts?
:
Updated:
Sadly, No Peer Review of Law Department Management Publications
:
Updated:
More on Reserve Setting
:
Updated:
Litigation Reserves, Without Reservation
:
Updated:
Changing SOX –Widespread Reorganizations of Law Departments?
:
Updated:
Setting Priorities on the Deluge of Projects Hitting the Law Department
:
Updated:
Litigation Costs, “Exponential Increases” in IP Cases and Cost Data Generally
:
Updated:
Survey Metrics From Law Departments – “Challenging” Areas of Law (Kirkpatrick & Lockhart 2004)
:
Updated:
Google Desktop Search and Its Searching Powers
:
Updated:
Altruistic Information Sharing Doesn’t Happen: Intranets, Case Management Systems and Knowledge Management
:
Updated:
Legal Technology Blog of Dennis Kennedy
:
Updated:
Blog on Electronic Discovery (e-Discovery) of Preston Gates
:
Updated:
Technology and the Lawyer in the Trenches
:
Updated:
GC Roundtable and Consulting
:
Updated:
Open cubicles for lawyers
:
Updated:
Offshoring – Some Fire Under all the Smoke
:
Updated:
Cost Control — Procurement Creeping In
:
Updated:
“Trends” in law department management
:
Updated:
Groups for GCs to Join
Law Department Management Blog