Articles Posted in Talent

“One of the most surprising lessons I’ve learned in this job is that you need to be in shape physically to lead a global function. That is a part of the balance you can’t forgo. The travel and the hours will destroy your health if you’re not careful about food, drink, sleep and exercise.”

This is a hard-won and good lesson from Michael O’Neill, the General Counsel of Lenovo, stated in in E. Leigh Dance, Bright Ideas: Insights from Legal Luminaries Worldwide (Mill City Press 2009) at 32 (See my post of July 10, 2009: health and welfare with 15 references and 4 metaposts.).

Some law departments (or their companies) pay for graduate programs taken by their lawyers. For example, someone might enroll in an executive MBA program or earn a project management certificate. For international lawyers, a resource like this is the Center for American and International Law, which Inside Counsel, June 2009 at 55, refers to as a place to help lawyers trained in other countries get up to speed on US law (See my post of July 13, 2009: bring foreign-country lawyers to headquarters.). Ford Motors, for example, sent one of its international lawyers to the training program – but took care to recoup what it spent.

“One downside — the lawyers who went through the training became so valuable that other companies try to lure them away. To protect its investment, Ford required those who left the company within two years to pay back the company for the cost of the training.”

When a legal department has lawyers who are admitted in a foreign jurisdiction and have only practiced there, it is important to integrate them with the mainstream department. You might bring them to headquarters for a period of training and enculturation. Two examples of this method are in Inside Counsel, June 2009 at 55.

Target Corp. established its first overseas legal office in India in 2005. “To build the team, Target recruited people with Indian law degrees who were working on graduate-level U.S. law degrees to participate in a 90-day or more internship at Target headquarters. Those who were successful were offered a job in Bangalore.”

A second example is United Technologies Corp., which recruited international lawyers from LLM programs and “brought them in to work at the US headquarters and then placed them in the international operation.” Both techniques make sense.

According to Hewitt Associates, “under-recognition of high potentials is one of the single biggest issues companies face.” This claim, an overstatement by a firm that consults on talent management, nevertheless makes a good point.

talent mgt., June 2009 at 17, adds that when executives treat specially their very best talent, many “worry about alienating or disengaging others in the organization. Or conversely, they over-reward average performance in a misplaced effort to acknowledge everyone’s contributions. These both send wrong messages.” (See my post of July 29, 2007: high potentials with 10 references.). General counsel should pay heed.

I do not know if the problem I describe hereafter exists, but the risk of a perception of impropriety exists.

A senior lawyer in a department directs substantial sums to a law firm in the year before the lawyer retires or leaves the department and joins that firm. That coincidence may be benign, or it may be suggest improper decisions. Whichever, might a cautious company add a prohibition in the terms of employment of any lawyers who selects or approves bills of a firm? Any lawyer who did so may not join that firm within one year of leaving the department (See my post of March 8, 2006: do soon-to-leave general counsel favor certain firms.).

Think for a moment. If you were general counsel and you opened a budget account for each of your lawyers with $20,000 and you told them they could pay an administrative assistant $30 an hour. Assuming three lawyers for every admin, each fully-used admin would make $50-60,000. Or, if some lawyers chose to use an admin for less time they can pocket any amount they spent less than $20,000.

Such an internal market, a shared service where clients can choose to use the service or not for a fee, would quickly demonstrate which admins work well and productively and which lawyers want or need admin services.

Right, problems pop up – all the difficulties that spring to mind. But the kernel of this proposition holds: use-based payments, meritocracy, and a free market based on real money.

As described on the website of Hogan Assessments, “The Hogan Personality Inventory (HPI) is a measure of normal personality and is used to predict job performance. The HPI was the first inventory of normal personality based on the Five-Factor Model and developed specifically for the business community. The HPI is a high-quality psychometric evaluation of personality characteristics that identifies the fundamental factors that distinguish personalities and determine career success.”

The HPI scales all make sense for in-house counsel:

“Service Orientation: being attentive, pleasant, and courteous to customers

One argument for having a demographically diverse slate of members on a team is that diversity produces innovation and creativity. A chapter in a recent book, however, by a strong proponent of diversity, not only doesn’t support the argument with research findings, but admits doubt. The following quote comes from Laura Empson, ed., Managing The Modern Law Firm: New Challenges New Perspectives (Oxford Univ. Press 2007) at 51 (by David Wilkins).

Wilkins cites a 2001 article that found the empirical research on whether and how diversity is actually related to work group function is limited “and the evidence is mixed.” Wilkins believes that other research has found that diversity’s boost to productivity “depends on the attitude and orientation that group members bring to their work.” Prejudice not only blocks the hoped-for benefits of diversity but can even hinder team performance if the team has to “negotiate the kinds of conflict and communication issues that often beset diverse groups.”

Bob Unterberger sent me this item.

As part of a discussion among members of Linkedin’s Legal Process Outsourcing Group, Pangea3 co-ceo Sanjay Kamlani observes:

“Several years ago, Forrester Research had predicted about 35,000 lawyer jobs shifting offshore by 2010 and about 79,000 by 2015.