Articles Posted in Talent

A presentation by a lawyer from TD Bank Financial Group makes the point that secondments should be two way – from the law firm to the law department as well as the other way around (See my posts of Sept. 21, 2005 about hiring secondees and Oct. 26, 2005 about the idea of a reverse secondment of paralegals.).

No situation has come to my attention where a law department assigned one of its lawyers to spend weeks or months at a law firm, perhaps to learn a new area of law, perhaps to tighten the bonds between the company and its counsel, or even to work closely on a massive project, but such an arrangement is plausible. Nothing says that the in-house gone out-house lawyer can’t continue to work on his or her previous responsibilities just because that lawyer’s office has moved.

Meyers-Briggs assessments show that younger generations are becoming increasingly extroverted, a person who is energized when with other people and who does not like to be alone. As related by USA Today, June 7, 2006 at 2B, people born before 1964 are split 50/50 between introversion – they become drained by social encounters and need time alone to recharge – and extroversion. So-called Generation Xers (born 1965-81) tilt 59 percent toward extroversion while Millennials (born after 1981) are at an even more extreme 62 percent [none of them are lawyers, yet].

If this shift toward extroversion holds for in-house lawyers, senior management will have a hard time understanding the sociability needs of younger lawyers; those lawyers won’t understand why the older lawyers want to close the door and work alone. The extroversion gap will call for tolerance and understanding on both sides.

My post of Aug. 21, 2005 tried but did not come to terms with the difference between “paralegal” and “legal assistant.” Then I read in GC Mid-Atlantic, May 2006 at 6 that the law department of William Bertrand, the general counsel of MedImmune, consists of 11 staff lawyers, as well as legal assistants, paralegals, patent agents, and government affairs managers.” (emphasis supplied). Here is a law department with both titles.

Another law department that I know, which also bestows both titles, distinguishes them as follows. Legal assistants rank between secretaries and paralegals in terms of pay, responsibility, administrative support, and quality of work.

Sara Armstrong, the general counsel of Graham Packaging, is the subject of an admiring profile in GC Mid-Atlantic, May 2006 at 30. No wonder, since among other qualities, she values and promotes work-life balance, which is “especially important for women professionals.”

She also praises, and embodies, commitment. “When her second child was born, she left the office at noon, delivered the child at 12:48 p.m. and was on a conference call at 1 p.m. (although only to alert the callers that she was otherwise occupied).”

Fiction would not be as ironic. “Commitment” is one way to characterize that striking example of work-new life balance.

Law.com In-House Counsel, May 26, 2006 (Daniel Panitz of Major, Lindsey & Africa), discusses succession planning for the general counsel position. The piece claims that an official backup general counsel is common, but I have never heard of one.

“It is customary for an organization’s board to coordinate with the CEO to ensure there is a designated GC successor in the event of an emergency. The GC is increasingly involved in this process. This emergency plan should be designed at the inception of the GC’s tenure.”

Wait. I understand the value of a succession plan, and I understand that sometimes a GC is unavailable and the next most knowledgeable lawyer might be deputized to make a decision or serve as the interim GC (Sears and Coca-Cola both did this recently), but I have never heard of a “designated GC successor,” let alone that having one is a customary practice.

“Human brains have evolved a particularly strong capacity to detect what neuroscientists call ‘errors’: perceived differences between expectation and actuality.” David Rock and Jeffrey Schwartz, “The Neuroscience of Leadership,” Strategy + Business, Summer 2006 at 73-4 (See my post of Jan. 3, 2006 on our inborn sensitivity to fairness.).

When a person detects a difference between what the person expected and what was delivered, one portion of the brain is particularly stimulated: the orbital frontal cortex. That location is closely connected to the brain’s fear circuitry, which resides in an organ called the amygdala (See my post of Feb. 12, 2006 on the amygdala hijack.). When those two brain areas react in tandem, they dampen the functioning of the prefrontal (controlled and rational) region and push people to become emotional and act more impulsively.

Change triggers this dual reaction; change in law departments causes emotional upset and impulsive responses arising to some degree out of fear. The brain needs communication and trust.

Do any readers know of in-house counsel who teach at either a business or law school? If you teach, you learn, so to carry one’s practice to academia should be something that some corporate lawyers relish. But I have not heard about any instances of corporate lawyers who moonlight in the classroom. Please let me know by e-mail .

Secretary: old-fashioned, steno-paddish, coffee-bringer, Remington-Rand (See my post of April 30, 2006 on my clepsydra award.). Not at all the racy image of the EXECUTIVE ASSISTANT, or the ADMINISTRATIVE ASSISTANT, let alone the EXECUTIVE ADMINISTRATIVE ASSISTANT!

Title inflation has blown up tradition (See my post of April 23, 2006 about the change in ratios of secretaries to lawyers.) and the new moniker outstrips changes in responsibility.

This question struck me as I read a piece in the American Scholar, Vol. 75, Spring 2006 at 125 (Nan Stone). Stone gave no advice, but it is worthwhile to fall back on native intelligence for some answers, since many general counsel wrestle with this situation.

Ask intelligent questions. Ask for a translation of jargon. Step back from the perspective of the subject matter expert. Evaluate the assumptions and traditions that frame the analysis. Force the guru to articulate knowledge, premises, and reasoning. Pursue a few what-if scenarios.

The Fundamental Attribution Error misleads when you blame an individual for something that went wrong, when in fact things happening around the person were much more important causes of the snafu.

If an indemnity agreement as signed hugely favors the other side, you can come down on the lawyer responsible, but perhaps the client over-rode the lawyer’s advice, or the other side set an impossible deadline to close the deal, or an avalanche of deals clobbered the lawyer at the same time, or outside counsel was in charge of those terms, or someone substituted the wrong page at 3:35 AM in the morning, or three bigger issues were negotiated very favorably as a trade-off. All the explanations are environmental factors that weaken or eliminate individual blame.

If something goes wrong, supervisors should always consider situational forces in addition to personal shortcomings; the Fundamental Attribution Error teaches that context, not incompetence, may have caused the flub.