Articles Posted in Knowledge Mgt.

A post on visual analytics drove me to imagine uses of it in legal departments (See my post of Feb. 10, 2010: a future of software that helps in-house counsel make decisions on data.). More generally, the reports software produces make or break them in terms of value delivered, especially matter management systems.

As it turns out, I have here and there returned to the topic of software reports (See my post of Dec. 18, 2006: five ways to obtain reports from matter management systems; March 26, 2007: turnaround time shown by matter management system; May 8, 2008: exporting reports from matter management systems to a spreadsheet; Feb. 15, 2009: management systems are only as good as their reporting capabilities; and March 20, 2009 #1: VizQL, a visualization query language of Tableau Software.).

Cousins of reporting, the domains of business intelligence and data mining may some day reach law departments (See my post of May 17, 2006: software for “legal business intelligence”; March 23, 2006: compared to knowledge management software; and May 6, 2009: data mining by law departments and law firms with 10 references.).

Many groups cater to the operational and administrative interests of in-house lawyers and their departmental colleagues. This first cut at a compilation of those groups includes a dozen that exist or may exist (and several metaposts that I have linked). Please let me know of others.

Contracts. For example, the leader is probably the International Association of Corporate Contract Managers (See my post of Jan. 21, 2010: IACCM and empirical research on commonly negotiated terms.).

Diversity. Minority Corporate Counsel Association (See my post of June 17, 2008: diversity with 29 references.).

Out of 30 contract terms most frequently negotiated, the top five in 2008 were (1) limitations of liability, (2) indemnification, (3) “price/charge/price changes,” (4) intellectual property, and (5) confidential information/data protection. These results come from a survey conducted by the International Association for Contract & Commercial Management (IACCM) that collected responses from almost 1,000 member organizations. www.iaccm.com

This kind of empirical research helps a legal department focus its knowledge management efforts – pay particular attention to the terms that are most often negotiated, train everyone, keep alternative language in a database, invest in document management – to be sure lawyers and paralegals who draft and revise contracts know the latest positions, text, and negotiation tips.

The other 25 terms can be found in the Int’l In-House Counsel J., Vol 2, Autumn 2009 at 1379.

Mikk Putk, an energetic Estonian from Tallinn , has assembled all these blogs. He has created an impressive online footprint while he works at a patent agency, NotaBene. Putk’s IP Blogs Search Engine is available on the main page of IPNetwork. For more information, here is a succinct quote from the company’s website:

Patendibüroo NotaBene OÜ on välja kasvanud 2007. aastal asutatud Tehnoloogiauuringute OÜst. Pakume täisteenust intellektuaalomandi valdkonnas ettevõtetele ning teadus- ja arendusasutustele alates idee tekkimisest kogu toote/teenuse elutsükli jooksul.

My points for this post are three: (1) online information useful to legal department managers is prodigious and international, (2) Ning’s are resources that are not well exploited in the legal domain, and (3) many models of information collection, analysis and delivery are possible and more will evolve for general counsel and others.

“Evidence-based management (EB Mgt.) is the systematic use of the best available evidence to improve management practice.” In the management and organization sciences, say the authors of an article in Acad. Mgt. Perspectives, Vol. 23, Nov. 2009 at 5, scant evidence exists, at least from their thorough and rigorous review of 60 years of academic publishing, that EB Mgt. will improve organizational performance.

A dispiriting finding, since one tenet of a progressive management philosophy is that managers can learn from others, with commensurate improvements in the performance of the functions they manage. The article finds little to support this view in the general business management arena, and it is even less likely to occur in the tiny domain of legal department supervision. Best practices, as the term is loosely bandied about, are far from based on evidence. Anecdotes are not evidence.

The future may find more practices of general counsel tested against benchmark metrics, such as whether dispersed lawyers in multiple offices, as compared to a majority in one location, results in lower or higher total legal spend as a percentage of revenue. Benchmark comparisons are a form of evidence, but they have yet to be matched systematically against practices (See my post of Nov. 22, 2009: evidence-based management.).

I urge members of LinkedIn to join my group, Law Department Management. We have more than 250 members and welcome everyone.

Foraging more widely on LinkedIn, I have found at least 35 groups for lawyers. Not in-house counsel exclusively, but lawyers or support functions for lawyers. In the aggregate, tens of thousands of LinkedIn people are members of those law-related groups (See my post of Sept. 22, 2008: social networks such as LinkedIn, with 7 references.). Others certainly exist, unknown to me

One of the selling points for matter management systems is that astute managers can comb through the data collected and spot issues before they boil over (See my post of March 19, 2009: matter management system data needs analysis.). Unfortunately, human nature and our mental machinery work against that promise.

Many obstacles slow trend spotting. We are lazy. Then too there is lots of “noise in the system” – in retrospect a trend loomed right in front of us, but at the time so did a confetti parade of other data. False positives come from our genetic predisposition to find patterns that aren’t there; we want to find logic, connections, rational sequences of events even if fortuity and randomness rule. Our tendency to the self-confirming bias means we spot the patent litigation wave coming and forget we are a patent litigator.

Anyone can see a long list of blinders, blind spots and being blindsided is long. Still, better to try to find meaning in metrics.

A recent book provided ample grist for this blog mill. David Galbenski’s Unbound: How Entrepreneurship is Dramatically Transforming Legal Services Today (2009) elicited eight posts (See my post of Oct. 12, 2009: lawyers not admitted in the US as GCs of US companies; Oct. 12, 2009: finance staff do not negotiate fee arrangements; Oct. 15, 2009: international revenue and formula for overseas lawyers; Oct. 15, 2009: “global” department if more than 25 percent are on two other continents; Oct. 25, 2009: LPO market at $4 billion; Dec. 1, 2009: growth in offshore legal service providers; Dec. 13, 2009: Johnson & Johnson; and Dec. 15, 2009: best-in-class processes.). For that outpouring, I decree it a blog book review.

Nestled in this blog are five other blog book reviews (See my post of July 30, 2009: Leigh Dance book; Aug. 5, 2009: Laura Empson book; Aug. 12, 2009: Ann Page and Richard Tapp as well as Peter Leeson; and Aug. 26, 2009: Robert Haig four-volume series.).

The International In-house Counsel Journal, established in 2007, publishes papers written exclusively by in-house counsel from around the world covering major areas of interest. Its website says “The papers are peer reviewed by an international editorial board of leading in-house counsel from across the world, each with an expertise within a specific jurisdiction and business sector.”

I read the Summer 2009 issue of IICJ and extracted a number of blog-suitable ideas (See my post of Dec. 15, 2009: use internal marketing group to improve your “brand image”; Dec. 15, 2009: top lawyers for regional groups of lawyers; Dec. 15, 2009: solo lawyers should not be junior; Dec. 22, 2009: draftsperson slur; Dec. 21, 2009: risk management checklist; and Dec. 22, 2009: interviews of new lawyers jointly with business heads of senior local counsel.).

At the end of a train of governance documents for legal departments such as mission statements, corporate policies, and contract templates, an article in Int’l In-House Counsel J., Vol 2, Summer 2009 at 1299, closes with the ambulance: “risk management checklists.” The author proceeds to explain each of the terms, except that last one, which set me wondering.

As its risk management checklist, a diligent legal team might prepare checklists of pratfalls in common activities and how to mitigate their legal consequences. If the internal lawyers retrieve those checklists, consult them, and apply them, life will improve. If that is not the gist of a “risk management checklist,” I welcome examples (See my post of Nov.15, 2005: legal risk with 7 references; and March 23, 2008: risk management with 18 references.).