Articles Posted in Productivity

Acacia Research Corporation licenses large corporate patent portfolios and makes money by negotiated licenses or litigated settlements. An article in Corp. Counsel, Dec. 2010 at 59, describes some of the publicly traded company’s deals, such as with the Japanese software company Access Co. Ltd., Renesas Electronics Corp., and several others (See my post of Sept. 30, 2010: Paul Ryan, Acacia CEO, among 25 honorees.). The website of Acacia claims that its subsidiaries control more than 160 patent portfolios. William Boice, a partner at Kilpatrick Stockton, shows a slide that credits Acacia’s subsidiaries with having brought over 200 lawsuits.

My take from all this goes to a likely change in work for in-house patent lawyers. They take part in decisions to abandon patent protection (See my post of Dec. 8, 2010: patent pare downs.). But then they may need to work on a deal to transfer rights to those patents on to a third party. Patents have value not just defensively, to exclude others from using your idea, but also as a source of revenue.

An alternative, as explained by Boice, is to join a defensive patent aggregation. Examples of those include Allied Security, Intellectual Ventures, and RPX Corporation (See my post of March 27, 2009: secondary market for patents.).

Management, of a legal department or of any function, comes down to decisions about priorities. One of those decisions for general counsel ought to concern what the lawyers should do particularly well – the core competencies of the department – and what tasks are secondary.

My latest article, published by the Nat. L. J., Dec. 13, 2010 at 9, gives examples of core competencies. Click here for the core competency article. It also explores five ramifications of a core-competency approach. The article draws on some of my earlier posts (See my post of May 23, 2008: core competence with 12 references; and Nov. 19, 2010: departmental core competencies with 12 references.).

“The world economic downturn has further boosted company in-house lawyers’ power, with cost-cutting giving them the impetus to hire fewer outside lawyers and taken on more and broader-ranging work themselves.”

Nothing like gaining strength from weakness! This quote, from the Economist online Oct. 19, 2010 (Michael Peel) is oblivious to its irony. Law departments with shrunken budgets don’t gain power. Instead, with less money they are forced to maneuver and make do. Sometimes necessity is the mother of invention and sometimes the external prod pushes a department to try out what it otherwise would not have tried. In no way though does penury create power. Lemons may sometimes create lemonade, but mostly they are small, hard and bitter, like a slashed budget. Without money, without muscle.

Whenever someone standardizes a process, ironically, it increases a small class of risks. It increases the chance that the unusual event falls through cracks in the steps, rules, guidelines and process maps. Those are Type II errors where legal risks are present but not spotted. If all subpoena requests move through the same pipeline, for instance, one of them will deviate from standard treatment and leak. That’s life.

On the other hand, well-constructed procedures and checklists, when followed, reduce far more risks than they permit through. Ad hoc solutions leave you in hock. A solid system helps people spot and discuss aberrations because they share a common framework and have something to match the discrepant event against.

Debunking. I love it, but this one hit home. I have written positively about productivity gains for lawyers who use two monitors (See my post of Sept. 30, 2009: monitors with 6 references.).

Support for my conclusion came from a study in 2008 that found productivity gains of 30-50 percent for text and spreadsheet tasks. The bubble meets pin, however, in PC World, Oct. 2010 at 77. NEC, a manufacturer of widescreen displays, commissioned the study, which should give pause to its findings, and in fact the researchers found a bell-curve distribution. “For a single-monitor setup, over 26 inches is too much, while dual-display gains top out at 22 inches.” Even more tellingly, “If you’re planning on using that second display for e-mail, Twitter, or other Internet-related distractions, however, you’re probably going to end up being less productive overall.” Sigh

A handwritten, two-page note arrived by mail a week ago and I was enchanted. It is so rare that anyone, let alone a general counsel, takes the time to write someone by resolutely non-digital pen. Charmed and uplifted by the personal touch, my mind wandered.

Nowadays, most in-house counsel hand draft very little of their work product. Keyboards rule. This despite the prevalent view that you write better prose if you take the time to handwrite it. A typing whizz, I doubt that old saw, for I can pause as long as I want to formulate a phrase or search for a word, and then bid my fingers fly on. (Please, no snide comments about how my output puts paid to my claim.)

I recollected apocryphal stories, one hopes, about general counsel who have all their emails printed. They then handwrite replies, which a secretary dutifully transcribes in the reply email. Beyond quaint. But, Rees, not everyone can touch type comfortably and quickly

“Studies have shown that the average employee with Internet access spends about one-fourth of the workday on e-mail – not all of which is work related.” This factoid comes from strategy+business, Winter 2010 at 126. If that is an average, in-house counsel might typically spend even more time on e-mail. If so, perhaps the single biggest boost to productivity would be software, techniques, or disciplines to improve the flow and handling of e-mail.

In line with the importance of e-mail productivity, consider that this blog has accumulated no less than 29 posts about effectiveness and e-mails. The most recent batch followed my second metapost (See my post of Aug. 26, 2009: loss of 24 minutes for each e-mail interruption and IQ diminishment; Aug. 26, 2009: five more tips for e-mail productivity; Dec. 8, 2009: expectations of rapid responses to e-mails; Dec. 14, 2009: four more ideas to improve email productivity; Feb. 8, 2010: law firm CIOs rated e-mail management as top annoyance; March 31, 2010: put a link to a document rather than attach it; June 15, 2010: software to lessen e-mail distractions; June 16, 2010: Internet interruptions; June 21, 2010: 8 suggestions for cc’s on emails; June 25, 2010: compared to instant messaging; June 29, 2010: embedded templates and response buttons in e-mail for litigation hold orders; July 12, 2010: a “quiet time” during a day for no e-mails; July 26, 2010: e-mail before bedtime has the jolt of caffeine; and Oct. 20, 2010: consider the environment before unthinkingly printing emails.).

To those newer items should be added the two previous metaposts (See my post of Nov. 6, 2006: e-mail with 6 references; Aug. 26, 2009: 30 e-mail effectiveness tips with 9 references.).

Lifehacking is a grassroots Internet movement begun in 2003 when a British tech writer, frustrated by his own inefficiency, polled many of his productive friends for their tips. As described in Julian Dibbell, ed., The Best Technology Writing 2010 (Yale Univ. 2010) at 198 (by Sam Anderson) “lifehacking has snowballed into a massive self-help program, written and revised constantly by the online global hive mind, that seeks to help you allocate your attention efficiently.” The site has an addictive allure, I found, and offers all kinds of practical tips. http://lifehacker.com/

Imagine a counterpart for in-house lawyers. Lawhacking would have broader ambitions than just tricks to improve mental focus. Whatever helps, other than substantive legal knowledge, would be fair game. Big to little, exotic to quotidian. Perhaps, dare I whisper, this blog has done some lawhacking?