Articles Posted in Talent

The merged legal department of Bank of America and Merrill Lynch, with a combined team of around 700, is in the midst of slimming down. According to Corp. Counsel, Vol. 16, April 2009 at 66, last December the legal staff had to “reapply for their jobs.”

Perhaps this is a way of saying to everyone, “Don’t assume anything. Your job is being evaluated.” But it makes me wonder how the process works. Does the General Counsel first choose his or her direct reports and they in turn look at the applications of people in their group? Does the application give legal staff an opportunity to make their own case? Can you apply for more than one job?

Layoffs will follow, or have already happened (See my post of Jan. 16, 2009: layoffs after mergers with 9 references.).

An article describes a practice at HCL Technologies, an Indian IT services company, whereby the company collects immediate comments by employees. As portrayed by MIT Sloan Mgt. Rev., Vol. 50, Winter 2009 at 46, employees can fill out “service tickets” any time they have a concern – “about the work they do, expenses or something as simple as the chairs they sit on.”

Only the employee who creates the service ticket can close it out, and the CEO monitors the number of open service tickets as a measure of the company’s responsiveness to its employees. A legal team could institute something like this, if and only if members of the department trust the absolute confidentiality of the complaint/suggestion process.

A law department of nearly 100 lawyers that I have worked with introduced an interesting concept to me: “role sizing.” Since I know nothing more than that fact, let me speculate what role sizing entails.

To role size might be to match the presumed scope of responsibility and expertise of a position to the ckills and abilities of the person holding that position. Imagine overlaying on the demands of a position a shape of the abilities of the incumbent. Some parts stick out – too hard for the person – while others are more than covered by the person – too easy for the person. Role sizing feels like a gedanken (thought experiment) unless you are prepared to act on the conclusions.

Grant general counsel legal knowledge and judgment. Grant them the ability to manage up and across their peers. What about managing down? Even if a general counsel avoids managerial ineptitude, some shortcomings in leading members of a law department are common, including the six below. I have listed them in what I perceive to be their declining frequency (See my post of March 30, 2009: inept management practices.).

Poor communicator – the general counsel who does not timely and completely share with the team what he or she learns (within the bounds of corporate and personnel confidentiality)

Unpredictable – difficult to guess what the general counsel will do, which makes people insecure and leads to too many decisions bucked up to the top lawyer (See my post of Jan. 25, 2009: bottleneck managers.)

As we blame parents for many misdeeds and misfortunes of their children, so too we blame managers for many shortcomings and grievances of their employees. General counsel, in loco parentis, face similar complaints, most deservedly if they themselves behave badly (See my post of April 23, 2008: bad behavior by managers with 10 references.).

My pool of posts on managerial incompetence has deepened considerably since that year-old metapost (See my post of Jan. 17, 2009: poor managers; Jan. 25, 2009: bottleneck managers; Oct. 12, 2006: clumsy managers; Aug. 22, 2006: the Peter Principal; Feb.12, 2008: dysfunctional law departments; Feb. 22, 2009: narcissistic managers; Feb. 26, 2009: no snark about law departments; Jan. 7, 2009: mistakes of newly-promoted managers; and Jan. 7, 2008: reasons to retain coaches.).

A profile of Gloria Santona, McDonald’s general counsel, includes a number of methods by which she creates a unified culture among the approximately 140 lawyers dispersed across 19 or 20 locations all over the world. One is that “the entire legal team participates in a global legal conference.” Another is that at the conference “we do a lot of activities that involve assigned seating so that whether they are in the meeting room, dinner, or the general session, they are rotating people …” Third, the law department uses a corporate intranet to connect the spread-out team. The article mentions a final, emollient touch: the department “takes the time to acknowledge personal landmarks like the birth of a coworker’s child or a promotion, as well as to highlight a couple of employees monthly.”

Many posts have drawn on McDonald’s for management sustenance, although not quite billions and billions posted (See my post of July 10, 2007: punning references to McDonald’s posts.). Some digest the law department’s capabilities (See my post of Jan. 16, 2006: its document assembly software; Jan. 17, 2006: its use of data from a corporate mainframe; April 6, 2007: its transformation of workers’ compensation; April 23, 2007: its sabbatical program; and June 15, 2008: about 147 attorneys and half were internationally based.).

The remainder comment on the company’s general counsel (See my post of Jan. 17, 2006 #1: reporting lines and responsibilities of Gloria Santona, its general counsel; Aug. 8, 2006: its European general counsel; June 24, 2007: Santona’s rise through the ranks; Aug. 4, 2007: former general counsel, Jeffrey Kriendler, ran Boston Markets; Aug. 6, 2008: Santona and her career path, Hispanic background, and emphasis on diversity; and March 25, 2009: Santona serves on board of Aon.).

Among her many claims to fame, Gloria Santona, the general counsel of McDonald’s, sits on the board of directors of Aon Corporation, a leading provider of risk management services, insurance and reinsurance brokerage and human capital and management consulting. Not only is Santona a board member, she serves on its Audit and Governance Committees and is chair of its Compliance Committee. All this is reported in the ACC Docket, Vol. 27, March 2009 at 98.

I am not sure what position to take regarding such dual roles. Santona is not only the general counsel of a major company (with approximately 150 lawyers in 20 countries) but she also leads its compliance, regulatory and corporate governance functions. To serve also as an active member of a another global company’s board of directors seems to demand much energy and time. Yet I know at least two other general counsel who are also on the board of another company.

The experience of dealing with strategy and board-level issues strengthens the managerial acumen of the top lawyer, which is to the good. The additional demands of time and pressure are the drawbacks, which is to the detriment of such an arrangement.

Pacific Business publishes Asian-Counsel, which published the results of a survey in the summer of 2008. One question asked in the survey was “What is the most common way your company locates and hires its in-house lawyers?”

The respondents (an unreported number) came from Asia and the Middle East. One chart depicts with bars the overall percentages of responses for five ways to recruit. I estimated the percentages from the chart.

“Legal recruiters” (50%) (See my post of Sept. 16, 2008: search firms and headhunters with 12 references.)

Here and there, law departments bring in interns from local law schools, either during the summer or term-time. Among the 75 cost-cutting ideas in the ACC Docket, Vol. 27, March 2009 at 45, is to evaluate whether it is cost effective to hire a third-year law student as an intern and thereby defer a permanent hire. “I get great experience and I get a part-time employee who really has a desire to learn at $15 an hour.” How can you go wrong at such a low cost?

Internships have appeared on several previous posts (See my post of Oct. 29, 2006: city law department uses intern; July 3, 2007: two-year internships; May 7, 2006: GE uses diversity interns; March 25, 2005: two law departments in NYC use third-year law students; April 23, 2006: economic and recruitment benefit of interns; and May 21, 2006: one of eight top cost-saving techniques.).

What gets measured gets manipulated. Clever people always figure out ways to make the most of reward goals or decision-making. If money in a law department depends on metrics, there will be efforts to spin and manipulate the numbers. People will game the system, if you want to put it cynically, or they will perform for pay, if you want to put it positively.

Searching my first 4,000 posts, I found numerous references to people gaming some performance objective (See my post of April 6, 2007: online evaluations of firms; and Feb. 20, 2008: accounting figures, by stretching out litigation.). Several posts have to do with the risks that billing arrangements will be manipulated (See my post of June 22, 2008: budgets; Sept. 7, 2008: unit billing; Sept. 4, 2006: fixed fees; Sept. 13, 2006: percentage of matters handled under alternative fee arrangements; and May 15, 2005: assignments of complexity to matters.).

Where adjustments, selective focus, and interpretations of metrics are possible – everywhere, therefore – it casts doubt on the legitimacy of benchmarks (See my post of May 16, 2006: total legal spending eliminates gaming the components; Oct. 8, 2007: ROI calculations; Nov. 8, 2007: bonus awards; Feb. 10, 2007: patent filings; and May 25, 2008: Goodhart’s Law.).