Articles Posted in Productivity

Here are some findings about the health benefits of an environmentally sound offices. Not that general counsel have much say as to their office environs, but a first step is to know more about options and benefits. Bus. Week, Dec. 7, 2009 at 15, describes a large study of tenants in buildings that have been awarded EPA Energy Star labels or LEED certification. “The survey found that employees took an average 2.9 fewer sick days each year in their environmentally sound offices than in their previous, nongreen workplaces — a cost savings to their employers of roughly $1,200 per worker, based on average salaries.”

The study also found that a bit more than half of the tenants reported a rise in employee productivity in their green digs — “adding up to 5% average increase worth $5,000 per worker annually.” Mens sana in corpore sano de aedficio sano?

E-mail productivity and security tips accumulate everywhere. I thought I had covered the field comprehensively, but four more good ideas appear in the NYSBA J., Vol. 81, Nov./Dec. 2009 at 58-59 (See my post of Aug. 26, 2009: 30 e-mail effectiveness tips with 9 references.).

1. Fill in the address box only when you are ready to send. Write the message, check the attachments, proofread, even pause to think a moment, and only then fill in the recipient’s name. A simple habit, but salutary.

2. Set up group email lists. If you are part of a deal or have any set of people you write to regularly, do the work once to set up the group email and save time thereafter (and don’t inadvertently omit someone).

“As chief legal officer for Anheuser-Busch InBev, [Sabine] Chalmers estimates she spends 50 percent of her time circling the globe in order to execute her lawyerly responsibilities.” It aches just to read that (See my post of July 16, 2009: frequent travel demands stamina; and July 17, 2009: circuit-riding visits to remote offices.) in the ACC Docket, Vol. 27, Dec. 2009 after 64.

That amount of peripatetic travel means (a) your home life is a wreck, (b) your body endures extreme time zone disorientation and sleep disruption, (c) health problems from re-circulated air increase, and (d) the stress of air travel. Aside from plush hotels and indulgent meals, to fly is to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.

Travel obligations arise from deals, from a desire to meet with key counsel, and from the need to knit together the unraveled law offices of a multinational legal team. Satisfying those obligations exacts a toll.

For those of you who face too much work and too little time, it sounds contradictory but give yourself ten or fifteen minutes between meetings. This tip from the ABA Law Practice Management Section e-letter set me to thinking. Many benefits can follow from the built-in margin.

You feel less stress so you are more productive; it nudges you to be choosier about which meetings you attend, since there is not as much time available. Additionally, can flex and go longer instead of bolting midway from the arbitrary, traditional one-hour time slot. Also, like a psychiatrist’s 50-minute hour you can use the stub of time to take notes and perhaps even think and prepare for the next one meeting (See my post of April 22, 2007: meetings with 9 references.). All good, but will others conform?

Although chary of broad-brush topics, I still try constantly to pull together material from this sprawling blog. So, here are six steps that a general counsel should take to ratchet up lawyer productivity in his or her department.

But first, the term “productivity.” Productivity for a law department means doing things efficiently – getting the most output from a general counsel’s resources. Productivity for a law department is only partly measurable as units of output per period of time (See my post of Nov. 23, 2008: how hard it is to prove how hard internal lawyers are working.). The raw material may be available – matters handled and hours worked – but the productivity equation remains unsolved. Macroeconomists use the term “total factor productivity,” which is the sum output of a country’s capital and labor. Law departments have some capital investments, but mostly consist of labor, professional’s brains working hard.

Hire good lawyers. The essential starting point for any general counsel is to hire (or inherit) intelligent, experienced, engaged, collaborative, and hard-working lawyers. Everything to do with this — talent management — conduces to higher productivity (See my post of Sept. 22, 2009: ways to find lawyers for openings other than search firms with 17 references and 1 metapost; and Sept. 16, 2008: search firms with 12 references.).

“Experience teaches us that if you conduct a very good early case assessment that looks at the facts and the law and the witnesses and the documents that you will know when you complete your ECA, 80 percent of all you will ever know about this case.” Coming from PD Villarreal, the head of litigation for Schering-Plough, that quote packs a wallop.

If it is true, after the initial investigation most general counsel would be excellently positioned to figure out what needs to be done in the case, what the case’s likely settlement value is, what kind of firm and other service providers are needed, and perhaps an alternative fee deal (See my post of Feb. 23, 2008: early case assessment with 8 references.).

http://lawdepartmentmanagement.typepad.com/law_department_management/2008/02/the-average-for.html. Although 80 percent is not omniscience, Villarreal maintains that “it is adequate and sufficient knowledge upon which to make decisions about the direction in which you want to go to resolve most controversies.” The interview of Villarreal is in Met. Corp. Counsel, Vol. 17, Nov. 2009 at 11.

“Libel law in England is not just expensive and wide-ranging …; it also is one of the most claimant-friendly systems in the world” notes the Economist, Nov. 14, 2009 at 18. Lawsuits with miniscule connections to England are filed there. Somewhat like the Eastern District of Texas, infamous for its friendliness to patent plaintiffs, or the specialized business court of Delaware designed to attract corporate litigants, or the Southern District of New York and its well-oiled courts for bankruptcies and massive reorganizations, jurisdictions around the world might come to vie to attract claimants. Perhaps some already do.

The frequency, cost, and inconvenience of lawsuits will rise if tort missiles are launched from jurisdictions that are the litigation equivalent of tax havens or financial intermediaries, “playgrounds for lawyers sparring on behalf of the powerful.”

“Countless studies show that proper lighting and acoustic levels play a key role in increasing workplace productivity.” The point is made in an article in Law Practice, Nov./Dec. 2009 at 39 by experts at PDR Corp, that it is better to “reduce your overall ambient light levels and incorporate task lighting controlled by dimmers and motion sensors.” “Task lighting” is jargon but the notion makes sense (See my post of Sept. 22, 2009: more on lighting and energy.).

The item also mentions that offices with plenum spaces above the ceiling allow noise to spread from office to office. “Add acoustical padding or pony walls to close gaps in your plenum space to create a quieter and ultimately more productive setting.”

A legal department might be able to invest in lighting systems and in sound dampening architecture. If it could, the productivity of its lawyers and others might rebound.

I wrote once about general counsel and the significant percentage of time scheduled for them by others, time that is not in their control (See my post of Sept. 8, 2008: you need a good administrative assistant to manage your calendar.). Cheryl Solomon, general counsel of the Gucci Group spoke with me recently about that point.

“My time is scheduled for me but often I control when things happen even if not the fact that they must happen. My schedule gets filled up, but often, I generate the need for the meeting or call.” She also agreed that her assistant definitely manages her calendar. “It’s been a disaster when I occasionally try to manage it myself.”

At the end, pressured by me, Solomon estimated that “maybe 20-25 percent of my time is committed by others without much or any say by me.”

If you are a general counsel frustrated by how hard it is to change ways of working in your department, perhaps it is some solace to understand why. From my experience as a consultant to legal departments and therefore a purported catalyst for change, I list six personality-based obstructions to doing things differently.

Solitary: Lawyers often work alone, not on teams, so they find it harder to pull all the oars at the same time, let alone change the stroke (See my post of April 5, 2009: teamwork and collaboration internally with 16 references.).

Ambitious: Often lawyers are competitive, which means they may oppose changes as an alteration of power or responsibility not to their liking. Result: heels dig in (See my post of Oct. 2, 2008: competitiveness with 29 references.).