Perhaps a reader can tell me the originator of the metrics below. Regardless of their source, these observations and percentages ring true. Managers of law departments would do better if they followed the advice suggested.
• 10 percent of people who hear a good idea will do something about it
• 25 percent will do something with it if they think hard about it
When faced with a discovery or investigation request, some law departments can turn to specialists within the company’s IT group. At one company, a group of specialists are known as the “computer incidence response team” (CIRT) and they handle tech troubles such as virus attacks, violations of company policy, illegal software, and hacking. They take care of all these kinds of technical glitches and also are available in limited doses to image, protect, and collect files forensically.
Since the members of this technology SWOT team are not litigation support specialists, they follow the steps the legal department asks them to do. Not really doing e-discovery if by that we mean deduping, filtering, reviewing documents for privilege production and more, they are still a resource.on their own or joined with an outside vendor. Plus, their services are much less expensive (See my post of May 3, 2008: internal discovery teams with 8 references.).
According to IP Law & Bus., Vol. 6, Sept. 2008 at 42, one of the practices at 3M Co. is to have its patent lawyers “not only attend meetings of the management teams and operating committee, but even keep regular office hours in the business units’ labs.”
Circuit riding means regular face time with distant clients (See my post of June 20, 2008: importance of physical proximity to clients for knowledge of the business; and Oct. 8, 2007: proximity helps but familiarity is even more crucial.). For busy researchers and inventors, patent counsel out of sight are out of mind. Many in-house counsel should get out of the house, so to speak, and regularly visit their clients.
Amidst the geysers of work you face as an in-house lawyer, how can you turn the tap a bit and deal with the most important tasks and problems? Here are some ideas culled from various sources.
1) Think in terms of your cost to your company per hour and the value of the task
2) Track your time on activities and review the data
Large lawsuits have lots of moving parts. They seem to be ripe for the skills of project managers, people who are trained in how to get the right resources at the right time to the correct activity. As mentioned in Met. Corp. Counsel, Vol. 16, June 2008 at 44, a lawyer who knows the laws, procedures and practices of major litigation does not necessarily have the mind set or the experience to keep the many trains on their various tracks and schedules.
To pair a lawyer who knows the law with a project manager who knows how to get things done efficiently sounds promising, but I do not know how well it works in real life. Litigation lawyers care about the law and strategy, not deadlines and metrics. Also, they outrank project managers (See my post of June 24, 2007: project management with 5 references; Aug. 15, 2008: perceptions of usefulness of project management software; and Dec. 12, 2007: project management software and litigation.)
Earlier I pulled together my extant metaposts that relate to litigation management (See my post of Oct. 2, 2008: 12 metaposts.) Here I add 10 other techniques available to general counsel that enhance their oversight and direction of litigation.
1. Staff your department with a litigation specialist and perhaps a team (See my post of Aug. 21, 2005: don’t hire a litigation manager; Feb. 9, 2008: don’t “manage” litigation, handle it; Feb. 26, 2008: litigation loads at Ford; Feb. 23, 2008: Affymetrix handles its own offensive litigation; May 1, 2005: should specialists handle lawsuits that arise from their work; Aug. 5, 2005: who should manage litigation; and Aug. 27, 2005: litigation staff as a proportion of law department staff.).
2. Use litigation paralegals (See my post of April 2, 2005: six metrics every litigation manager should implement; March 29, 2005: litigation costs and staff; and March 12, 2006: lawyers per paralegal by practice area.).
How best to handle lawsuits brought against a company has stimulated from this blogger large amounts of commentary. Ideas about how best to hire a qualified and cost-effective litigation firm fall under my category, Outside Counsel Management (See my post of May 19, 2006: evaluation of litigation firms; Aug. 3, 2005: Baxter’s Litigation Advisory Board; May 1, 2006: litigation management trends; and May 4, 2005: insurance defense firms.).
In addition, 12 metaposts on this blog relate directly or substantially to litigation management. The ones most closely allied with litigation management include the 800-carat gorilla, e-discovery (See my post of July 26, 2008: internal discovery teams (See my post of May 3, 2008: internal discovery teams with 8 references.), expert witnesses (See my post of Feb. 2, 2008: expert witnesses with 9 references.), transitioning cases to a new firm after a competitive bid (See my post of Sept. 12, 2008: transfers of matters to new counsel with 8 references.), and conducting an early assessment of the case (See my post of Feb. 23, 2008: early case assessment with 8 references; June 10, 2008: firm hired solely for ECA.).
That is not all. Other litigation metaposts consider service providers for litigation-related tasks (See my post of Jan. 28, 2007: cottage industry, litigation with 8 references.), litigation hold orders (See my post of Aug. 27, 2008: litigation hold notices with 6 references.), and preventing lawsuits from starting (See my post of Aug. 27, 2005: model litigation audit checklist; June 20, 2008: bonuses by Tyco for prevention of suits; and arbitration or mediation (See my post of Jan. 16, 2008: arbitration with 14 references.).
Publicly-traded companies periodically ask their Directors to complete a questionnaire about their independence. One use for the information is to maintain Directors & Officers insurance coverage. Some companies perform the check up more than once a year. For this post, the question is whether the general counsel should be responsible for this corporate governance, primarily administrative task.
No doubt a lawyer should review the results if there is any Director involvement that deserves scrutiny. No doubt a lawyer should make sure that the information gathered from Directors complies with whatever statutes and regulations require. Big doubts, however, whether this quasi-legal task ought to land on the plate of the law department (See my post of April 9, 2008: quasi-legal tasks with 14 references.).
Originally developed by the economist George Stigler, the “economics of information” perspective looks at search and storage costs related to information needed by decision makers, according to Richard B. McKenzie, Why Popcorn Costs so Much at the Movies (Copernicus Books 2008) at 73 and 108.
An unheralded fact of law department life is that it takes time and effort to collect information. Notwithstanding the prevailing belief, especially among younger people, that all information is a click away on the World Wide Web, it may not be or you burn up considerable time to find and absorb it (See my post of March 9, 2007: the price of legal information is being driven to zero; May 30, 2006: limits on our working memory; Jan. 10, 2006: lawyer time online; Nov. 15, 2005: online resources; Jan. 13, 2006: free online information; Jan. 28, 2008: hard to find the right law firm through the internet; and Jan. 25, 2008: Martindale-Hubble and shared evaluations of law firms.).
An economics-of-information analysis explains why we resort to shortcuts, heuristics, and seat-of-pants guidance from colleagues to know enough to take a decision. It suggests why law departments like panel firms and preferred providers: they reduce search costs (See my post of June 18, 2007: law-firm panels with 13. Sole-sourcing eliminates search costs even further (See my post of July 28, 2008: single law firm to handle large geography or representation.). Many other examples of the economics of information are evident in law departments.
It would drive me crazy to have other people schedule me for phone calls and meetings, yet that is what routinely happens for some general counsel.
To be master of my calendar matters to me, an independent consultant, but once you reach a certain level of heavy time commitments, with multiple demands for the same hours, and frequent juggles of time, other people have to tend to your comings and goings, your sittings and talkings. Some general counsel make their schedule available on a department-wide calendar. Most rely on their trusted gatekeeper and timer (See my post of Sept. 5, 2007: have a good administrative assistant.).
Law Department Management Blog