Articles Posted in Productivity

For several years I have shown a slide during speeches that estimates the percentage of time general counsel spend (1) serving the Board, CEO and peers, (2) handling their own legal work, (3) guiding other lawyers in-house on substantive legal matters, and (4) running the legal department (See my post of Dec. 16, 2005: gives time estimates.). I recently asked Cheryl Solomon, general counsel of the Gucci Group, about her allocation of time between those categories.

For serving up and across, she thought it is “more like 50 percent of my time” because the matters she works on almost always involve a peer executive or higher.

Solomon made a point that I had not considered in my estimates of general counsel time. She also has global responsibility for compliance and records retention so she is often involved in enterprise-based work (and estimated 20-30% of her time).

During a discussion on management with Cheryl Solomon, general counsel of the Gucci Group, she mentioned that she does quite a bit of actual legal work. It includes review of contracts, negotiations, pleadings, and work product created by other lawyers.

When do general counsel stop doing real legal work? Even deeper, what constitutes “real legal work”? Some chief legal officers delegate almost all the legal work. The factors are too numerous to permit any rule of thumb, but it does seem almost certain that the larger the department, the smaller the percentage of time the top lawyer devotes to hands-on legal work.

The simplest time tracking system asks lawyers to estimate the percentage of time they worked on individual matters each time period, such as a week or month (See my post of Nov. 22, 2008: internal time tracking with 16 references.). General counsel adopt all manner of time keeping methods, but whatever the rules, advantages and disadvantages become apparent.

Proponents say that tracking time:

1. Conveys a constant message that management and clients care about the efficient use of legal time;

Any general counsel on a panel, many journalists finishing off an article on in-house departments, and all consultants in pitches to general counsel scatter this phrase everywhere. Gospel it has become that workloads are up and resources are down. I wonder.

I wonder how you prove the claimed imbalance and pace have worsened (See my post of Nov. 23, 2008: how difficult it is to prove how hard internal lawyers are working.).

I wonder whether complexity of legal work has actually increased, despite everyone’s assertion that it has (See my post of March 13, 2007: complexity with 4 references; and Dec. 27, 2008: complexity of legal practice with 20 references.). Abilities and codified knowledge have also increased.

In-house lawyers who have a masochistic streak might swing a scythe against the invasive species known as corporate policies (See my post of Nov. 2, 2009: corporate policies with 12 references.). James Nortz, the director of compliance for Bausch and Lomb, plants six seeds of ways to “hoe the line” on weedlike policies, all in ACC Docket, Vol. 28, Sept. 2009 at 104-105.

1. “Gather and kill them by the dozens.” Only keep policies that are absolutely essential for the garden that is your business.

2. “Remove the idiotic ‘applies to all employees” clause.” Talk about over-reaching!

A study done in 2007 found that “our minds drift away from our tasks fully one-third of the time.” That tidbit from Wired, Nov. 2009 at 56, set my thoughts to wandering … about moments of time off at work. No one works hard all the time; everyone slips in some downtime (See my post of Nov. 6, 2006: skiving at work; Feb. 25, 2008: attorneys and wasted time during a day; 60-90 minutes a day; and Aug. 21, 2008: main leisure time-wasters for workers.). The point of the Wired article was that drifting away may actually be useful because when we lapse our brains are reconfiguring and reprocessing input, which can help us be more creative.

A lesser form of unproductivity is delay (See my post of Nov. 17, 2008: putting off work; and Nov. 17, 2008: procrastination can harm health.). A worse manifestation is disengagement.

On the flip side, some friendliness and collegiality may appear to be frivolous, but it oils the gears of a department and helps build camaraderie. Whatever the diversion, if lawyers are not genuinely working, it should reduce what some managers consider their chargeable hours (See my post of May 21, 2009: internal chargeable hours with 12 references.).

The Practical Law J., Vol. 1, Nov. 2009 at 70, describes several aspects of the 100-lawyer department of Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC), primarily those related to its current strategic plan (See my post of June 25, 2008: strategic plan with 10 references.).

My first observation is that CSC’s legal department has a three-year strategic plan, “endorsed by CEO Mike Laphen.” If the CEO reviews and approves a legal group’s plan, the plan takes on much more significance and its goals are likely baked into some personal objectives of key lawyers.

I have scoffed at a five-year plan for a legal department, but at the same time I believe that if you take the time to prepare a plan you realistically need a horizon of more than one year (See my post of Jan. 8, 2009: Borealis’s five year plan.). Three years might be the most plausible time period for achieving change (See my post of July 26, 2008: InBev’s three-year plan; Dec. 29, 2008 #1: business plan for one year; strategic plan for multiple years; Jan. 23, 2009: patent on a law department process for strategic planning; July 4, 2009: online game to prepare a strategic plan; and Oct. 4, 2009: Novartis’ strategic plan for legal.).

A general counsel I know, well respected and a veteran, states this and believes it to be profound. He is mistaken, I think.

Nothing dictates a cause-and-effect link between an amount of business activity and how much legal work it generates. At the one extreme, many business people conduct all sorts of arrangements on a handshake — not a lawyer in sight. At the other extreme, creative lawyers can identify risks and draft documents for the most innocuous business decision until the cows come home.

I believe that companies, like gardens consume all the planting, tilling, watering and weeding you can give them, are always able to absorb more legal services. Even between two companies that are peas in a pod, twins separated at birth, legal spend and activity can vary significantly at the same level of revenue.

Richard Susskind, speaking at ILTA 2009, expounded on the distinction between project management and process analysis. Project management is a sophisticated discipline with many tools and best-known methods. Project management controls and coordinates non-routine legal work that lasts for a period of time. Process analysis, as Susskind defined it, decides how to “unchunk” legal services for multi-sourcing. What parts of a complex project can and should be done by which people, in other words.

In-house counsel often find themselves forced to become project managers, such as when they oversee two law firms on an acquisition, plus a forensic consulting firm and several vendors in due diligence. Yet few of them have had formal training in project management skills. Somewhat similarly, in-house lawyers should think about divvying up work so that the most cost-effective but competent team does each part, all the while exercising project management adeptness to orchestrate the effort.

A report on talent from the Corporate Executive Board identifies 38 attributes of an “Employment Value Proposition.” Sorted into five broad categories, one is “People” and includes “camaraderie” and “collegial work environment.” How might a general counsel measure the “friends factor” in his or her legal department?

A general counsel could survey how many times a month members go for a social lunch, not a purposeful lunch such as recruitment, with another member of the department. Or ask how many times a month members meet someone from the department socially after work hours? A more direct question would ask them to rate the friendliness of the department on a scale. A bit far-fetched, but an email filter could estimate the number of non-work related emails or IMs went back and forth. Suppose we count the number of enjoyable events per month, such as football pools, birthday parties, showers and going-away parties. We could mix in the results from a question or two on the company-wide morale or engagement survey. All that data would let us create an index for the department’s friend factor.

If several legal groups did this and shared their benchmark data, would it turn out that friendlier departments were any more efficient? I doubt it. People do befriend others at work but often the connections are superficial and not conducive to greater productivity or efficiency.