Articles Posted in Talent

Some general counsel live far from their main office and commute by air. One, in the defense industry, flew in every week and stayed in an apartment. Another one I know flies from Connecticut to the Midwest where he heads a Fortune 250 company’s law department. I believe that Bill Ide commuted from Atlanta while he was the top lawyer for Monsanto.

And there are probably others who do not want to uproot their family but covet the remote chief lawyer position (See my post of May 3, 2007 on other idiosyncrasies of some general counsel.).

Lucy Kellaway, writing in the Fin. Times, April 2, 2007 at 8with her inimitable bite, lampoons annual evaluations. They are clogged with bureaucracy such as having pages and pages of evaluation form to complete and multiple signatures to obtain (See my post of Jan. 24, 2006 about the use of company-wide forms.). “Then there is the tiresome business of trying to make what is subjective into something that can be measured objectively.” She mocks at grading a lawyer on a scale of one to 10 on characteristics such as “problem-solving” and “integrity.” Third is the fanciful approach of setting three or more targets for the employee for the year; she believes for most people the target should be to “keep on keeping on.”

Most of her scorn Kellaway saves for the way the evaluation process leads to fudge. Because it is difficult to deliver criticism and because the underling must work with the criticizer the rest of the year it makes it almost impossible to say anything even slightly critical in the appraisal. As her last blow, she notes the difficulty of being specific, not platitudinous, in an appraisal. Is the term “hard worker” vague or specific? What about “results oriented”? How direct and clear are terms like “amiable” and “team player”?

Nearly all in-house lawyers, on both sides of the evaluation, would agree with this broadside (See my posts of Feb. 15, 2006 on the shift from evaluations to performance management and references cited; and Nov. 6, 2006 on dislike of evaluations.).

In all my consulting engagements, the members of the law department have views about the degree to which their department is “political.” No one defines the term, but “politics” is uniformly described as an undesirable feature. People try to ingratiate themselves and they try to land responsibility for high-profile projects. They want to work with senior executives

Everyone assumes there is a shared meaning of “political.” Not true, and my few ventures into office politics and its many manifestations have not mounted a definition (See my posts of Oct. 10, 2005 on politics and succession planning; and May 2, 2007 on political fights as stress for the newly promoted on competition vs conflict; Aug. 2, 2006 on stress management for Scottish lawyers; June 5, 2006 on conflict as a cause of stress; and Jan. 20, 2007 on task and relationship conflicts.). In retrospect it is odd that there is not more on this blog about this ubiquitous phenomenon.

Tongue in cheek, “office politics” as what others do to get ahead that wrongs me and is not based on merit. Weeds in the garden of work, wherever people are employed there is politics (See posts of Oct. 24, 2006 on rumors; and April 13, 2007 #4 on gossip.).

Once I noticed one ad with on a testimonial of a general counsel, I spotted others everywhere. Here are a few of recent vintage:

An ad by Knobbe Martens Olson & Bear in Corp. Counsel, March 2007 at 41, quotes Matthew Fawcett of JDS Uniphase. The legal department of Concentra, a national healthcare company, shows up in a BottomLine Technologies case study. In an advertisement, Henry Schein, Inc. poses its law department for LawTrac Development Corp. (for example, InsideCounsel, May 2007 at 11). An attorney for American Airlines, not the general counsel, poses in front of an American jet on behalf of LexisNexis Martindale-Hubble (ABA J., Vol. 93, May 2007 at 3). The general counsel of New World Restaurant Group, Jill Sisson, appears in an ad for the US law firm Holme Roberts & Owen (InsideCounsel, May 2007 at 70).

I wonder what the law departments got in return?

A law department that has run into difficulties recruiting the right talent might consider granting rewards to employees for introductions that result in permanent appointments (See my post of March 26, 2007 with data on employee referrals.). According to the Fin. Times, April 16, 2007 at 6, “Almost half of UK employers offer staff an incentive to solicit job applications from friends and associates.” The savings that accrue from not paying the fees of search firms and other costs can be as much as 50 percent. Another benefit is that the new employee is more likely to share the culture of the recruiting firm, because an acquaintance identified the person, although some people worry that diversity of viewpoints will suffer.

If a law department can offer hiring bonuses on its own, it still needs to treat each candidate on the same basis as all other candidates and to conceal the source through which a referral has entered the recruitment pipeline.

In the Harv. Bus. Rev., Vol. 85, March 2007 at 115, co-authors Laurie Bassi and Daniel McMurrer describe a framework of 23 human capital management (HCM) practices. Readers can find the first nine summarized previously (See my post of May 11, 2007.).

This post covers the final three categories, again with some rewording to fit law departments.

Knowledge accessibility includes four practices:

A piece in the Fin. Times, April 26, 2007 at 14, reports on the professionalization of executive search. Among its observations, the article suggests five rules to observe if a searcher approaches you about a possible new position.

“Be courteous, not superior.” A headhunter may be useful to you in the future, so treat that person professionally (See my post of Aug. 9, 2006 about being courteous to service providers.).

“Form a view.” Think through your current position and whether you find it to be what you want and to provide what you want (See my post of Dec. 28, 2006 about promotions and career paths.).

This quote comes from the Fin. Times, Feb. 21, 2007 at 8. The law department of Wal-Mart has more than 150 lawyers: more than 40 percent of them are female and nearly a third are ethnic minorities.

Other law departments may match or exceed the gender distribution – the J.C. Penney department comes to mind – but the sizeable ethnic diversity surely stands out. I wonder whether there is some overlap between gender totals and ethnicity totals, as for example if an African-American female counts in both percentages.

Stefan Stern, who writes thoughtful columns for the Financial Times, passes on some good points about why it is better to recruit from the ranks (Fin. Times, March 6, 2007 at 7). “In the long run, growing your own talent, and then holding onto it, is always going to be a cheaper and more effective approach than stepping outside to find it in a noisy and uncertain marketplace.”

He criticizes the headhunter business. “According to industry experts, one in three search assignments, on average, is never filled.” That statistic, if it holds true for talent searches by law departments, is startling.

Stern believes that many headhunters are second careerists, who may have no particular aptitude or discipline for spotting talented individuals.

When its former general counsel was to retire, Marriott International “had a wide open, nine-months, excruciating search for the right person.” As described in the Bisnow on Business E-Letter</em>, May 2007, the company selected a veteran in-house lawyer, Ed Ryan, to take charge of the 90-lawyer department. During the process no one told Ryan anything about his status, until when he became one of five finalists.