Articles Posted in Talent

The varying elements of experience for an in-house attorney consist of the attorney’s (1) formal education, (2) years since graduation from law school, (3) years in the current company’s law department, (4) degree of legal specialization over time, (5) actual work experience, which includes the number of different jobs held, (6) professional development such as CLE, and (7) the abilities of supervisors.

Each of these elements of experience accounts for a different amount of influence on benchmarks. A law department could create a scaled metric for each of the seven elements for each of its lawyers. With such data compiled annually going back several years, the department could see how well its lawyers per billion dollars of revenue or total legal spending as a percentage of revenue correlated to the elements of experience. Similarly, for the benchmark of inside spending per lawyer, each of these kinds of experience makes a different contribution but it would take a set of data to show the degree to which they correlate with that metric.

To derive such data, to find out which elements of experience are more important for productivity – as indicated by benchmark ratios – it would be fascinating if several law departments contributed this data about their lawyers. The group could then draw conclusions about correlations after someone runs a multiple-regression analysis (See my post of Feb. 4, 2008: an example of multiple regression.).

In-house staff who are trained to support lawyers in substantive areas are highly valued (See my posts of Aug. 21, 2005: the terms paralegal or legal assistant; March 23, 2006: certificates of paralegals; March 19, 2006: certified legal assistants are as common as non-certified; Jan. 3, 2006: save money by hiring experienced paralegals rather than junior lawyers; March 18, 2005: are there limits to what good paralegals can do; and Aug. 26, 2005: measuring delegation to paralegals.).

Several practice areas tend to use more paralegals, but litigation usually has the most (See my posts of April 2, 2005: six metrics every litigation manager should implement; March 29, 2005: litigation costs and staff; Aug. 27, 2005: litigation staff as a proportion of law department staff; March 12, 2006: on ratios of lawyers per paralegal, practice areas differ greatly; and April 23, 2006: four corporate lawyers to each secretary; Oct. 26, 2005: reverse second a paralegal to a law firm to learn a new area.).

Benchmark metrics and structure both show the influence of in-house paralegals (See my posts of June 28, 2005: to whom should paralegals and secretaries report; June 28, 2005: shift to more paralegals and fewer secretaries; Sept. 27, 2005: 3.0 median paralegals in US departments; Sept. 10, 2005: paralegals should report to the lawyers they support; March 29, 2005: absence of paralegals throws off international staffing metrics; and Oct. 8, 2005: some areas of the world have no paralegals.).

The term “culture” in the context of law departments is slippery (See my post of Nov. 20, 2007: culture in law departments and references cited.) but whatever its meanings, people often acknowledge its presence. “That’s not the way we do things around here.” Let’s look at a few aspects of culture.

Culture in a law department is malleable. It is influenced in large measure by the general counsel. Consequently, the longer someone holds that position, the deeper the imprint on the department’s culture.

Culture makes a difference in recruitment and retention (See my post of Jan. 4, 2008: socialization.). People tend to hire others who are like themselves and evidence similar values and culture.

The law department of Starbucks Coffee Company has devised a way to help remote lawyers from feeling out of sight and out of mind. Through a somewhat informal process, lawyers based at headquarters select a “buddy” lawyer in the field. The buddy is a peer, at the same reporting level. The headquarters-based lawyer assumes responsibility for keeping the field lawyer up to date about department developments and provides collegial support. The goal of the buddy arrangement is to help remote lawyers feel more connected with the legal department at headquarters.

This commendable practice appears in the ACC Docket, Vol. 30, June 2008 at 50. The second practice of this law department, which has approximately 50 lawyers worldwide, is to hold a monthly conference call that all the attorneys are invited to join.

A number of posts – 29 by my count – have dealt with aspects of diversity in law departments.

As a descriptive term, diversity takes on many hues (See my posts of Sept. 4, 2005: defining a diverse lawyer; Sept. 4, 2006: minority counsel distinguished from diverse counsel; and Dec. 4, 2005: diversity aims less at women, more at minorities.).

Diversity has value in areas other than protected classifications (See my posts of Jan. 20, 2006: cognitive style diversity more important than demographic diversity; Aug. 26, 2006: international and linguistic diversity; and Jan. 6, 2006: social network compared to demographic diversity.).

“[Caterpillar] has paid for dozens of attorneys to earn MBAs from the University of Chicago.”. Since the department has 179 attorneys — of which only 58 are US-based — that means quite a high percentage have taken advantage of this professional development opportunity, all of which is reported in Corp. Counsel, Vol. 15, June 2008 at 103.

This also suggests to me that the law department has negotiated a special arrangement and perhaps discounted tuition costs from that business school. Perhaps these are executive MBA degrees. Even so, the investment by the law department is enormous, unless the company funds such professional development.

Other law departments have subsidized graduate studies for their senior lawyers, but none that I have heard of have done so at this scale (See my posts of Nov. 6, 2005: GC of National Australia Bank; May 14, 2005: executive education courses for in-house counsel; Jan. 27, 2006: Bethlehem Steel’s GC; April 12, 2006: executive education courses; Aug. 26, 2006 #3: GC of Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab; Nov. 25, 2006 and June 16, 2006 #3: a UK program to grant MBA’s to in-house counsel; and Dec. 31, 2006: JD/MBA joint degrees.).

Of the 179 lawyers on Caterpillar’s legal team, 121 of them (68%) are based outside the United States. GM has nearly half its 236 lawyers based outside the U.S. and among McDonald’s 147 lawyers about half are based internationally. All these figures come from Corp. Counsel, Vol. 15, June 2008 at 103 and 105.

Data like this about overseas lawyers suggests the need for a benchmark metric: percentage of lawyers outside the home country in relation to percentage of revenue generated internationally.

For example, a company that earns a third of its revenue overseas and has a third of its lawyers based outside the home country would have a ratio of one (30/30). I suspect that ratio will be still be well below 0.5 even when a company starts to earn more than a third of its revenue internationally and its total revenue passes the several billion dollar mark (See my post of March 19, 2006: modest need for international lawyers in US law departments.).

Winner of Corporate Counsel’s Best Legal Department of 2008 award, the law department of Qwest Communications leaves us with a good example of a general counsel who pushed for a benefit to his team. As explained in Corp. Counsel, Vol. 15, June 2008 at 96, Rich Baer lobbied successfully for an exception to the company’s policy against in-place promotions and salary increases.

The ability to bestow those promotions and pay bumps, presumably without a change in title, helped him reduce the department’s attrition rate. Others could explore obtaining a similar privilege (See my post of Oct. 6, 2006: GC should visibly promote and defend the department’s lawyers.).

Mark Belnick, the former general counsel of Tyco, escaped criminal and SEC charges. Not surprisingly, he fulminates in InsideCounsel, June 2008 at 54, about the risks general counsel now face. Belnick says “the threat of becoming the target of an internal or external investigation has scared off bright and talented lawyers from going in-house.” I wonder what instances he can cite to prove that statement. No high-profile, high-pay, high-prestige legal job comes without risks, but I doubt that law firm partners, offered the top legal job of a company, balk because of the personal legal risks the position entails.

Later, he states that an “atmosphere of paranoia” in legal departments “has even made some general counsel retain their own counsel – not to consult on issues outside their expertise but to consult on how they should behave to avoid getting in the middle of risky situations” (See my posts of Nov. 10, 2007: survey data about general counsel hiring personal counsel; and posts of July 25, 2005 about the costs of boards retaining independent counsel; Sept. 27, 2005 #3; Oct. 30, 2005 #2; Feb. 18, 2006 #2; Feb. 19, 2006 #2; and Nov. 24, 2005 #3.).independent counsel to Boards of Directors.).

The importance of leadership by general counsel and others in law departments is everywhere proclaimed (See my posts of Dec. 19, 2005: a key goal; Feb. 4, 2006: a key to best deployment of knowledge workers; May 10, 2006 and Jan. 18, 2008: high in professional development rankings.).

Definitions abound of the traits of a leader and how to assess leaders (See my posts of March 15, 2006: Boeing’s leadership competencies; May 11, 2007: five leadership traits; June 10, 2007: Human Capital Management Part III; Feb. 12, 2008: management by walking around; Sept. 25, 2005: 180˚ evaluation of leadership ability; Sept. 27, 2005: upward evaluations of leaders.). Various contributors account for differences in leadership attributes (See my posts of Dec. 5, 2005 and July 18, 2006: gender; Dec. 21, 2005: emotional intelligence; and May 30, 2006: neuroscience.).

Many law department managers strive to develop the leadership skills of their lawyers (See my posts of Feb. 4, 2006: peer-to-peer efforts; Aug. 26, 2006 #3: leadership training; Nov. 25, 2006: InBev leadership training; June 9, 2007: Acadia Life developing in-house leaders; Nov. 4, 2007: Texas General Counsel Forum and leadership training; and April 6, 2008: new-lawyer orientation at GE and leadership training.).