Articles Posted in Productivity

I lately read an intriguing idea: report the stage at which the law department is first involved in important matters. It would be easy enough for the responsible lawyer, when setting up a new matter in a management system, to categorize the point when she first plunged into a project as early, intermediate, or late – a subjective measure (See my post of March 26, 2008: how to define “matter.”).

No objective standards exist, at this time, for such labels, and lawyers might bend toward noting “early” so that they look better. After all, smart clients want to bring in a good lawyer early on. But what do you do if your are brought in prematurely, before clients kill a bad idea for business reasons? On the other hand, a lawyer might categorize the point of first involvement as late to create an excuse for something.

For data to be reliable, lawyers would have to consistently and objectively categorize their time of first involvement – yet, how do you define the quanta of involvement needed – and do so over many months. Would clients’ ratings match?

As with all in-house attorneys, patent lawyers need to be managed to help them most efficiently go about their duties. Law Department Management has accumulated quite a few posts on the range of work they do that is not adversarial (See my posts of Jan. 3, 2006: patent counsel and value delivered; July 18, 2006: 27 metrics for a patent group; April 12, 2006: total cost of IP legal services; Nov. 13, 2005: restructuring of Motorola’s patent team; April 8, 2007: Univ. of Virginia’s in-house patent attorneys; and May 14, 2006 #2: Intuit’s expansion of its resources.). After I labored to assemble this mass of posts that follow, I realized that my blog uses the word “patent” 681 times, and I had looked at each one of them.

Evaluate inventions for patentability (See my post of March 23 2008: Patent Review Committees with references cited; and Dec. 4, 2006: set patent strategy at Palm.)

Prepare and prosecute patent applications (See my posts of Sept. 27, 2005: offshore costs; Nov. 14, 2005: Motorola and Indian drafters; Oct. 10, 2005: DuPont; Dec. 7, 2007: percentage of IP work outsourced; Oct. 8, 2007: IBM’s extensive use of retired patent counsel; Feb. 4, 2007: SAP Canada’s productivity; and Feb. 10, 2007 #2: GE’s goal to boost patent applications.). To obtain patents they may competitively bid “prep and prosc” work (See my posts of May 23, 2007: fixed fees for patent applications; and March 9, 2007: Cisco.).

I graduated from Columbia Law School in 1978 and each year the school invites me to serve as a judge for the first-year moot court program. Twice I have done so and I plan to don the powdered wig this year.

Every time an in-house lawyer contributes time to a moot court program, that lawyer has offered a public service, a pro bono contribution. Moreover, to some degree that lawyer has also helped law school students realize that there are career choices other than in private practice. The more law graduates consider an in-house career and the more in-house departments secure their share of excellent graduates, the easier it is to manage the legal function.

The new general counsel of General Mills, Roderick Palmore, is responsible not only for the company’s legal function but also for compliance and risk management. As reported in InsideCounsel, March 2008 at 13, the three areas are not uncommon responsibilities of a US general counsel. I thought again about that will-o’-the-wisp, “risk management.”

My view is that responsibility for enterprise risk management extends far beyond the appropriate role of a general counsel. To corral legal risk is hard enough, not to mention to ride herd on a company’s panoply of risk (See my posts of Nov. 8, 2007: enterprise risk management and general counsel’s unclear role; Jan. 10, 2006: enterprise risk management; and Aug. 27, 2005: general counsel as “reputational risk protector”).

Even trying to rein in legal risks is a bronco hard to break (See my posts of Jan. 3, 2008: even “legal risk” has unclear meaning; Aug. 14, 2005 with its skeptical view of that amorphous term; Nov. 15, 2005: references cited which grapple with definitions of “legal risk”; Jan. 13, 2006 on uncertainty vs. risk; and March 1, 2007 on compartmentalization in a law department and legal risk.).

One of the unsung software heroes in law departments is its red-lining program. Microsoft Word has a red-line capability, but specialized packages have many more capabilities. For example, many law departments I have worked with have licensed DeltaView.

Given that much of the work of in-house lawyers revolves around contracts and drafting modifications to them, it becomes crucial to be able to show changes from one version to the next. It is a real tool for productivity (See my posts in the category of productivity; and Feb. 9, 2008: 27 packages for law departments.).

This is one post you might wish to email to anyone you know who cares about efficiency in a law department. The PDF consists of six articles by me on that topic. Click here to download the compilation. Download rees_morrison_articles_compilation_productivity.pdf

This blog has scattered in different places several of my articles in PDF format, but this compilation and two more that will follow go beyond the articles as published (See my posts of Jan. 20, 2008: most-favored-nation pricing; Jan. 23, 2008: core teams at law firms; Jan. 23, 2008: how to analyze invoices; Feb. 4, 2008: three key benchmarks; and Feb. 16, 2008: challenges to convergence.).

Some law departments pride themselves on handling as much legal work of their company as possible (See my post of Feb. 23, 2008: company handles most litigation in-house.). Other departments stay small and buy the services of law firms for most of their legal needs (See my post of Dec. 17, 2006: ADVO directs most work to outside counsel.).

A pervasive, recurrent deliberation for every general counsel comes down to the venerable, yet still vital, make-buy decision. Can we satisfy this need for legal counsel or work by our internal efforts or do we also need to retain an outside lawyer? No one can claim a single best answer to the question (See my posts of July 2, 2007: companies take different views; and Feb. 10, 2007: a core, strategic decision.) and some even argue that “inside or outside” is a misguided inquiry (See my post of June 5, 2006: wrong question — “should this project be done by inside or outside counsel?”).

A typical law department distributes its workload, when measured by amounts spent, more toward outside counsel than toward inside (See my posts of June 28, 2005: usual 40 inside/60 outside ratio; March 19, 2006: application to Canadian data; and May 26, 2007: Canadian data on shifting work inside to control costs.). Even that simple ratio that monetizes make vs. buy conceals the complexity of how you realistically measure the balance of work (See my post of Dec. 11, 2006: how to measure work kept inside and work exported to outside counsel.).

The general counsel of Ford Motor, David Leitch spoke recently to a group and his remarks are published in the Nat’l L.J., Vol. 30, Jan. 28, 2008. Leitch mentions that Ford Motor has about 13,000 cases pending against it. Up those cases probably 10,000 are asbestos-related and are not particularly active (See my posts of Oct. 25, 2007: the percentage of dormant cases; April 17, 2007: percentage of dormancy months; and Aug. 22, 2006: a metric of law firm performance.). “Another 2000 2500 at any given point in time are product liability cases.” The point has been made before that a law department’s absolute number of cases pending may be a poor indicator of workload (See my post of Aug. 22, 2006: number of lawsuits pending.).

One unusual aspect of Ford’s litigation program is that its in-house attorneys try a lot of cases. “[W]e tend to try 80 to 100 product liability cases in a year, as well as a handful of employment and other types of cases” says Leitch. He proudly reports that Ford wins about 80 percent of the cases than it takes through trial (See my post of Feb. 23, 2008: Affymetrix does its own offensive litigation; Feb. 9, 2008: don’t “manage” litigation, handle it.). Its volume of cases allows Ford to selectively represent itself on many of them.

At LegalTech NY this year, Exari handed out case studies about two law departments. Dow Jones’ legal team can “deliver tailored, self-service contracts to its global sales force” as a self-service option for subscription agreements. Westpac, an Australian financial services company, uses Exari software to generate 80 percent of the suite of customer documents for its commercial equipment loans, all in one-tenth the time.

I have doubted the penetration of document assembly into law departments (See my posts of March 24, 2005: if-then, rule-based document assembly software; and Jan. 28, 2007: some history on the field.) but the software niche has plenty of offerings (See my posts of April 5, 2007: 10 applications listed; and April 16, 2007: five more applications.).

Several law departments who use document assembly and their service providers have been cited (See my posts of June 18, 2007: two references cited; Aug. 31, 2005: Schering-Plough Canada; Jan. 16, 2006: McDonalds; Feb. 6, 2007: Business Integrity users; Jan. 4, 2006: Microsoft; and Jan. 14, 2007: General Electric.).

Dr. Marshall Goldsmith, in his column for Talent Mgt., Jan. 2008 and 54, points out our bias to add on initiatives. He writes “The recognition and reward systems in most enterprises are geared to acknowledge the doing of something. We get credit for doing something good. We rarely get credit for ceasing to do something bad. Yet, they are two different sides of the same coin.” A general counsel might be reluctant to put an end to a senseless meeting or requirement or style of working because it feels like an admission of error to jettison some long-standing silliness.

It is the rare general counsel who scraps some encrusted practice or procedure (See my post of April 1, 2007: when to stop doing things.) even though the rules and expectations have long gone moldy but still complicated productivity (See my post of March 27, 2005: inventory your management initiatives.). As brevity is the soul of wit, simplicity is the heart of efficiency.