Articles Posted in Productivity

Whereas a project team can be somewhat informal, a committee in a legal department is duly appointed and has more formally structured delegations (See my post of May 13, 2009: 11 committees in Exelon’s law department.). Also, a committee just keeps meeting, with no lifespan determined by completion of its task; if there is a task to be completed, after which the members disperse, most people define the effort as a project team (See my post of Feb. 1, 2009: project teams of law departments with 39 references and 4 metaposts.). Then there is the Milton Berle crack: “a committee is a group that keeps minutes and loses hours.”

Law department committees plan activities, but other people come to them for approval also, such as a social committee (See my post of Jan. 21, 2008: collect, vet and reward ideas; Aug. 3, 2005: prepare mission statement; July 16, 2007: to promote diversity; and Dec. 11, 2008: Pfizer and diversity.). People don’t come to project teams for permission. Both teams and committees suffer from problems with efficiency (See my post of Aug. 28, 2006: attack on committee effectiveness.).

Virtual teams of lawyers, where not all of them are located in one place, occur more and more frequently, either with inside or outside counsel. An article in MIT Sloan Mgt. Rev., Vol. 50, Summer 2009 at 65, nicely lays out the benefits and costs of dispersed teams.

The opportunities include (1) “Heterogeneous knowledge resources,” (2) “Utilization of cost advantages,” (3) “Access to diverse skills and experience,” (4) “Knowledge about diverse markets,” and (5) “’Follow the sun’ working.”

Liabilities of virtual teams include (1) “Language barriers,” (2) “Cultural incompatibilities,” (3) “Difficulties establishing ‘common ground’,” (4) “Fewer synchronous face-to-face interactions,” and (5) “Good teamwork more difficult to achieve.”

More than two years ago I compiled what I had written about the infernal time sponge, meetings (See my post of April 22, 2007: meetings with 9 references.). Since then, in-house attorneys have endured countless more hours in meetings. To honor and console them, I have compiled my posts since then.

Some posts are bathed in constructive sunlight – techniques to improve meetings (See my post of July 13, 2009: readings in conjunction with meetings; Aug. 10, 2007: share a meal instead of a meeting; July 29, 2007: run better meetings with 6 tips; Nov. 18, 2007: 11 tips for more effective meetings; May 8, 2008: instant feedback after a meeting; March 1, 2008: conference room reservation systems; March 30, 2008: laptops used during meetings; Aug. 28, 2008: telepresence for meetings; Nov. 6, 2008: PACER; and April 25, 2009: breakouts from large meetings.).

Other posts walk through the valley of the shadow of meetings – obstacles to effective meetings (See my post of Jan. 23, 2008: drawbacks of meetings in terms of aggregating reliable information; Dec. 16, 2007: loss of attention due to Blackberrys; and June 5, 2007: politics in meetings.).

The legendary Prof. Edward Tufte, interviewed for MIT Sloan Mgt. Rev., Vol. 50, Summer 2009 at 38, argues that meetings are more efficient if members devote much of their time during them to reading.. “I like enforced reading in meetings.”

A corollary of reading is that people are pushed to prepare their thoughts ahead of time and commit them to paper. People waffle less and will be more cogent in their arguments. Meetings run this way are more participative and shorter, but people do have to work harder to prepare. They actually have to think about the topic of the meeting. How extraordinarily demanding (See my post of April 22, 2007: meetings with 9 references.)!

To be able to “run a good race” as an in-house lawyer over a period of years, it helps to stay healthy. An assortment of posts on this blog refer to physical health (See my post of Jan. 13, 2006 #2: health is crucial to a person’s overall happiness; Nov. 17, 2008: procrastination can harm health; Aug. 27, 2005: metrics on sick days; April 29, 2009: coming to work while sick; April 27, 2006: brain health is the number one indicator of longevity; Jan. 6, 2009: Spearman’s g correlates to health and lifespan; Jan. 8, 2008: health care and good looks; and March 26, 2008: physical appearance indicates physical fitness.).

An important part of a healthy lifestyle is, to put it finely, sweating (See my post of Feb. 25, 2008: exercise and the brain; April 16, 2007: corporate health centers; Nov. 6, 2007: energy; May 2, 2008: exercise improves the mind; Nov. 23, 2008: thermogenesis; and Jan. 30, 2009: even moderate energy sharpens one’s memory.). Among other benefits, exercise combats some of the debilitations of stress (See my post of June 11, 2008: stress with 18 references; and May 18, 2007: stress and pressure with 7 references.).

Healthy people get away from the stress and grind (See my post of Feb. 22, 2009: vacations and holidays with 10 references.). They also get enough shut-eye. An insufficient amount of restorative sleep should be a wakeup call (See my post of June 29, 2009: sleep and coffee with 10 references.).

This blunt advice, as important as it is difficult, comes from Peter Beshar, the General Counsel of Marsh & McClennan, writing in E. Leigh Dance, Bright Ideas: Insights from Legal Luminaries Worldwide (Mill City Press 2009) at 5. Beshar’s essay about the crisis at Marsh in 2005 lays out this and six other recommendations for how a general counsel should act during a crisis – and I would add that decisiveness by the top lawyer reaps rewards at any time.

Beshar knows his colleagues. To be decisive “is particularly hard for lawyers, since we always want more information to make a more informed decision. In a crisis you don’t have that luxury. You need to make decisions based on the best available information and then don’t look back by second guessing yourself.”

By the way, I had to smile at his seventh recommendation. Beshar quotes Winston Churchill’s advice on how to get through any difficult situation: “When you are going through hell, by all means keep going.”

Coffee jump starts many of us, but slightly more important than that, longitudinal studies “show that drinking coffee cuts the risky of dying early from a heart attack or stroke,” writes the Harv. Bus. Rev., Vol. 86, June 2009 at 22. More, “coffee also appears to offer some small protection against Type 2 diabetes, gallstones and Parkinson’s disease.” I toast Javascript!

But I brim with enthusiasm for in-house productivity so my take-away about coffee is that “it causes feelings of well-being and increases energy, alertness and motivation. Functional MRI scans show that coffee activates parts of the brain involved in short-term memory, the kind that helps focus attention on tasks at hand.” Coffee, the New World elixir, is “brimming with antioxidants and other phytonutrients.” Gulp, no wonder I have a well-used Starbucks card (See my post of June 29, 2009: sleep and coffee with 10 references.).

For a retreat that I facilitated, the lawyers of the department suggested several dysfunctional situations that they wanted to improve. All of them evidence failures of teamwork or collegiality.

(See my post of April 5, 2009: teamwork and collaboration internally with 16 references.).

Lawyers failing to get another lawyer to review their work on significant documents, such as written legal opinions and template agreements. This leads to poor work going to clients, often leading to greater embarrassment and work that needs to be corrected.

A recent survey of senior in-house attorneys asked them to select the obstacles they face to making effective use of productivity metrics. The survey, by LexisNexis CounselLink entitled “Effects of the Current Economic Downturn on U.S. Law Departments” 2009 at 17, offered respondents six choices. I have listed them in order of frequency, with the percentage of respondents who marked that choice in parenthesis. My comments follow.

Time (22%) – competing demands for time always dogs in-house lawyers. For some managers, the opportunity cost of collecting, vetting, analyzing, and acting on metrics stands out more prominently than the hoped-for gains (See my post of Sept. 9, 2008: opportunity costs of information can be calculated.).

Accuracy of Information (19.8%) – garbage in, garbage out and the costs of verification

I woke up this morning thinking of “To sleep, perchance to dream of law department management effectiveness.” Later, I hunted through my archives to find my posts on slumber (See my post of May 2, 2008: sleep enhances memory; Nov. 7, 2007: sleep relieves stress; Feb. 20, 2007: sleep on it to make a good decision; Aug. 26, 2008: sleep-deprived associates; Dec. 5, 2007: circadian sensitivity; March 5, 2009: work and study when you are sharp; and Jan. 30, 2009: Mark Gluck on benefits of sleep for mental sharpness.).

For the beverage that counters sleepiness, this blogger has brewed several gulps of posts (See my post of Dec. 19, 2007: grounds for insight; April 22, 2008: caffeine and adenosine; and July 13, 2008 #1: coffee slows mental decline.).

Now, back to dreaming about grande vanilla lattes, extra hot.