Articles Posted in Productivity

“On average, in-house corporate counsel are working 50 hours a week, and for a majority (63%) of them, this amount has stayed the same over the past two years.” From the Canadian Corporate Counsel Association survey of its members for the 2007 In-House Corporate Counsel Barometer, at 3, this finding confirms other similar estimates (See my posts of Sept. 25, 2005 which speaks of “generally 45-50 hours” in the context of the usual benchmark of 1,850 hours a year; and April 13, 2006 where 52% said 41-50 hours a week while 38% said 51-60 hours.).

Later, at 8, the report offers more specifics. Some 20 percent of the respondents said they average 40 or fewer hours a week; 47 percent said their typical work week demanded between 41 and 50 hours; 28 percent said they put in 51 to 60 hours on average; and 5 percent fell into the extreme range of more than 60 hours a week (See my post of Dec. 12, 2006 on “extreme jobs” of more than 60 hours a week.).

The report says nothing about what percentage of those hours were worked in the office or at home.

The 1,225-attorney law department of General Electric has a budget hovering around $1 billion, according to Corp. Counsel, Vol. 14, May 2007 at 92. The $163 billion company’s department has its own dedicated legal IT team, which includes 10 full-time staff and one attorney.

The article makes the point that the team customizes much of its software to meet the law department’s unusual needs because off-the-shelf software doesn’t work for a law department of its size (See my posts of Jan. 30, 2006 on customized patent software; Sept. 18, 2006 on the advantages of user groups; Feb. 12, 2006 on the US Army Claims Services’ bespoke package; Sept. 5, 2005 and a Lotus Notes application; and Dec. 5, 2005 on Thomas Miller & Co. and its OASIS customized software.).

The article describes software the GE legal group has developed for virtual deal rooms, workflow tools, and tracking systems. The article does not explain whether that IT team also provides helpline support for the department. It leaves the impression that the group is primarily a programming shop.

According to Corp. Counsel, Vol. 14, May 2007 at 90, General Electric’s law department pushes to reduce its cases’ cycle time (how quickly they are resolved). The law department during the period from 2002 to 2005 has reduced its average case cycle time from 19 months to 9.2 months (at 95).

It makes complete sense to resolve cases as promptly as possible that can and should be resolved, because lingering cases suck up outside counsel fees and inside attention. That goal, however, may bump into some problems.

Plaintiffs’ lawyers may take advantage of a law department’s desire to resolve cases quickly and use delay to gain a bit of a negotiating edge. Second, sometimes cases languish without any activity or cost and that should be just fine for a defendant law department (See my post of April 17, 2007 on cycle times and dormancy months.). Third, case managers should focus on the hairy, risky lawsuits, not on shortening the months minor cases last. Another reason is that inside case managers have to keep pushing law firms to hear the same drum beat: close cases promptly.

At a recent conference, a thoughtful law department manager linked the quality of work lawyers can handle and the quantity of that work. She said that workload, even if heavy, doesn’t seem as draining or morale busting if the work is of fairly consistently of high quality. If you like your work, you don’t mind being fully occupied.

It’s the mind-numbing, commodity work that does not draw fully on the lawyer’s talents and professional interests that demoralize them and make them complain about their crushing workload (See my post of March 18, 2007 on the importance of commodity legal work.).

The British academic, C.P. Snow, distinguished between the intellectual cultures of scientists and humanists. Snow could have extended that distinction, perhaps, to law department managers.

Managers in law departments who think primarily in terms of economic concepts, metrics, processes and structure – all devoid of humans and their passions and needs – belong to Snow’s first camp – rationalist, positivist scientists. Those lawyer managers who think primarily in terms of people, training, knowledge and engagement – the softer sciences and the non-quantifiable features of law departments – fall into the camp of the romantic humanists (See my post of May 16, 2007 on multidisciplinary views of law department management.).

Like the infamous Cartesian split between soul and body, a divide that is increasingly under attack as factitious, well-run law departments should not slight either side of the equation. General counsel and other managers ought to bridge Snow’s two cultures. Law department processes must function effectively and, just as important, people must be capable and motivated.

A law department that has tracked practice-area benchmarks over a period of three or more years can present that data on a series of comparative charts (See my posts of Sept. 3, 2006 on such benchmarks, and references cited; and Jan. 6, 2007 for other data.). Each chart shows one practice area benchmark where the first year of the benchmark is set at zero. Each year after that, the chart shows the percentage change from the first year.

By this method of normalizing the data – change against the same zero baseline — differences in productivity would be apparent (See my post of Nov. 13, 2006 and its explanation of normalized figures.). For litigators, the chart might show cases closed; for the patent group, applications filed. Commercial lawyers, they might track the dollar value of contracts negotiated and signed; labor lawyers might track grievances dealt with. Square feet leased, bought or sold might be a metric for real estate lawyers while the value of M&A deals worked on could serve for corporate lawyers.

The set of charts, each displaying changes in output for a practice group from a common starting point, will help a law department’s managers staff, plan, allocate bonuses, invest in technology, and explain to clients the contributions of the law department.

A successful blogger must enjoy writing. I certainly do. So it gives me special pleasure to recognize some of the writing instructors I know who have at various times helped lawyers in law departments write more effectively.

Stephen Armstrong

Bryan Garner at Law Prose

By contributing author Brad Blickstein, Blickstein Group, on legal service providers:

Any law department considering outsourcing legal work overseas—and any vendor considering adding this to their slate of offerings—should check out “Guidelines for Outsourcing Growth” in the May 3, 2007 issue of National Law Journal, which discusses guidelines that have been issued by the LA County, City of New York and San Diego Bar Associations.

As is stated in the article and in the San Diego opinion, outsourcing of legal research and similar work is ok as long as local counsel (1) informs its client, if there’s a reasonable expectation that the work would be done by the firm itself, (2) supervise the outsourced work properly and (3) protect the client confidences and secrets.

“One study suggests that the number of meetings attended by the average executive doubled between the 1960s and the 1980s.” According to other researchers, “Senior managers attend nearly 23 hours of meetings every week, and people working for large organizations tend to have more meetings than those in smaller ones.” Both quotes come from a useful article about meetings sgrogelb@email.uncc.edu in MIT Sloan Mgt. Rev., Winter 2007 at 18 (See my post of Oct. 19, 2005 on communication tools for managers.). Both findings apply directly to in-house counsel, especially senior lawyers in large companies.

Oddly, “researchers have found no direct relationship between a person’s obligations to attend meetings (the number of meetings and time spent) and his or her job satisfaction.” It turns out that when people have a strong drive to accomplish their work, meetings diminish job satisfaction; for those who are less goal oriented more meetings are actually more desirable (See my post of Oct. 22, 2006 on bureaucracy and meetings.).

Yet meetings are very important to how one feels about one’s work. Three studies found that “the single most powerful factor in job satisfaction is how one feels about the effectiveness of the meetings he or she attends” (See my posts of March 27, 2005 about productivity muted by meetings; March 6, 2006 on decision-making at meetings; Dec. 7, 2005 on communication time wasters.).

A profile in the Nat. Law J., April 10, 2007 of Gregory Bower, the general counsel of the US’s Government Printing Office touched on the difference between a departmentally sanctioned form of pro bono and forms that a lawyer takes on personally. “As a federal agency, the GPO doesn’t engage in pro bono work. Bower points out, however, that he encourages his lawyers “to engage in pro bono work on an individual basis and as allowed by federal law.”

Some law departments commit, as an entire law department, to support a pro bono activity (See my posts of Feb. 11, 2007 on the distinction between pro bono and public service; Feb. 25, 2007 on Exelon’s contributions; and May 7, 2006 on Computer Associates’ efforts.). For the legal departments of US government agencies, the distinction between departmental support and personal support is crucial. For private corporations, I doubt there is a similar divide.