Articles Posted in Productivity

Risks from reductions in force among the lawyers of a legal team include the following:

1. Increases in time to accomplish tasks, reduction or delay in services, for example, contracts or patent filings, and any contractual work
2. More legal work pushed back to clients to handle or simply not done

“Use a designated contract coordinator from each in-house business unit, thereby streamlining the processes from ‘review and revise’ to final negotiation and execution of contracts in each unit. This minimizes the number of employees needed to finalize contracts.” This idea comes from 75 cost-cutters in the ACC Docket, Vol. 27, March 2009 at 45 (See my post of Aug. 16, 2006: end-to-end process for contract management.).

My view continues to be that contract administration should not reside in the law department (See my post of Aug. 19, 2007: huge role for contract administrators; May 5, 2006: contract administrators; March 18, 2005: separate contract managers from others; Nov. 22, 2008: contract management software with 11 references; and Feb. 22, 2009: reference materials on contract management.). Accordingly, I favor clients taking on as much of contract coordination as possible.

In-house counsel spend hours on conference calls, so any suggestions can make a difference in effectiveness. I took these tips from a post by Mike Dillon and tweaked them a bit (See my post of June 14, 2007: six suggestions for better conference calls.).

1. Deal with the fact you will be talking to an unseen group and receiving no visual cues or feedback.
2. Use the right phone in a quiet, undisturbed room. If you really can’t find a quiet room, use the mute button [often *6] until you want to speak. And, don’t shuffle papers!

I admit to a belief based on no data: large law departments always have some rainy day cash they can spend. General counsel of big departments steward large budgets and can almost always find funds, if they want to, to pilot a program, hire a consultant, invest in new software, run a study or otherwise invest capital. Over time, the availability in larger departments of discretionary funding of fertilizes improvements, which lowers total legal spending as a percentage of revenue and lawyers per billion (See my post of Aug. 21, 2008: total legal spending as a percentage of revenue (TLS/Rev) with 9 references and one metapost; and Feb. 25, 2009: lawyers per billion with 22 references and one metapost.).

Small law departments, with nowhere to scrounge funds and little fiscal flexibility, can’t innovate as easily. With tiny or no slush funds, they lose the compounding improvements of investment and fall behind in the productivity competition with larger departments.

A notable summary comes from an article in the McKinsey Quarterly, 2008, No. 4, at 131, by two Stanford professors that has to do with what facilitates positive change. “First, [leaders] can think constantly about how to develop the most successful blend of existing ideas rather than the newest and most radical ones. They can also set a public, inspiring, and difficult goal and then break it down into manageable chunks. Finally, they can boost the odds that innovative ideas will spread, by encouraging their organizations to identify affordances that help people learn about, understand, and applying new products, systems, and procedures.”

Each of these three methods make eminent sense for general counsel to adopt (See my post of Feb. 14, 2009: combine familiar ideas into new approaches; Feb. 23, 2009: establish BHAGs for law departments; Feb. 5, 2009: nurture affordances; and Feb. 23, 2009: collect and distribute ideas.).

“[I]nnovations spread quickly when organizations focus relentlessly on selecting and spreading ideas in ways that ease the burden of thought and action for everyone involved.” The quote comes from a thought-provoking article in the McKinsey Quarterly, 2008, No. 4, at 131, by Stanford professors Hayagreeva Rao and Robert Sutton. That sentence started me thinking about how a general counsel can “select and spread” progressive management ideas.

1. Require and publish a cost-saving idea every quarter from every managing lawyer (See my post of Dec. 21, 2008: try a method and report on it.).

2. Design self-study and team-teaching activities (See my post of Feb. 19, 2009: collective learning by a leadership group.).

Hundreds of peer-reviewed studies on setting goals show that measurable, specific, and somewhat (but not absurdly) difficult ones are best for motivating effort.” Two authors of an article in the McKinsey Quarterly, 2008, No. 4, at 136, believe that “motivating people to action requires a blend of lofty aspirations (to be attained in the distant future) and concrete goals (to be accomplished in the near term).” A general counsel can set ambitious goals that motivate the department.

Examples of BHAGs might include closing hundreds of lawsuits that have been moldering away; getting control over thousands of contracts from a template and administration standpipe; redoing the law-department intranet so that it is much more useful; in one month, culling thirty percent of the law firms that have peripheral roles; or creating backup guidelines for every major workstream.

Hats off to David Munn for his efforts to pull together sources of information on contract management. I extracted this material from his blog.

Although I believe legal departments should not have administrative responsibility for contracts, it is still useful for them to understand the activities and alternatives available to contract administration. (See my post of Nov. 22, 2008: contract management software with 11 references.). In any event, law departments spend much time on contracts (See my post of May 5, 2006: contracts with 15 references.).

Aberdeen Group – Has research materials on contract management, although a subscription is required to access much of it.

Techniques exist to encourage people to speak out in meetings (See my post of May 8, 2008: instant feedback after a meeting.). These ideas are most constructive in staff meetings where members periodically convene.

1. Remind senior lawyers and big mouths before the meetings start not to dominate conversations.

2. Start with the most junior or quietist lawyers when you ask for comments rather than opening the topic to anyone or “going around the table.” Going around the table can create anxiety and it can cause people to force comments that have low value, since everything has been said already.

InsideCounsel, Jan. 2009 at 57, summarizes of a gathering of in-house counsel. Murray Aust, a senior counsel at Royal Bank of Canada, describes briefly his law department’s program called “Demand Management.” He refers to it as the complement to vendor management, meaning they “developed a checklist that literally starts with the question of whether legal counsel, internal or external, is required on a matter.”

His law department wants more control over the services it renders. With the discipline of this program, the legal department tries to achieve some consistency in when it and its external counsel handle a matter and proceeds from there. “So far this methodology has produced tremendous returns,” Aust claims.

“Demand Management” might be in the genre of Service Level Agreements, guidelines for contracts, rules on lawyer decision-making, rejection of quasi-legal tasks, and chargeback arrangements – all policies to keep lawyers focused on their highest and best use (See my post of March 23, 2008: SLAs; Sept. 17, 2005: setting minimum requirements for legal department review; Jan. 25, 2009: in-house rules for decisions by lawyers; April 9, 2008: quasi-legal tasks with 14 references; and Jan. 27, 2008: selectively charge for time servicing clients on some matters.).