Articles Posted in Talent

It is a challenge having compliance staff, or any non-lawyer function such as contracts management or internal audit, reporting to the general counsel, because those staff may be viewed by the lawyers as second-class citizens.  If deep down the lawyers in charge believe that lawyers stand at the top of the professional ladder, they will create or allow to grow an atmosphere of unequals.  I have seen this most commonly when compliance and law are housed in one department.   

If you have lawyers inter-mixed with non-lawyer professionals, make special efforts to treat the groups equally.  The efforts could include direct reporting, title equality, special recognitions, and countering overt or covert distinctions. rwmorrison@hildebrandt.com

The March 2005 issue of Counsel to Counsel referred to an interesting idea (pg. 9): for a large merger, the general counsel selected a senior lawyer, suspended or re-assigned that lawyer’s typical responsibilities, and for the duration of the deal, made the merger the lawyer’s sole job.  (Also noteworthy, the general counsel persuaded the president of the unit driving the merger to similarly assign a top lieutenant from that business unit.)

Opportunities like these can be rewards (well, I don’t want to be naïve, as they might be nightmares) for the temporarily-assigned lawyer, and they will certainly test and grow the lawyer’s management skills.  They recognize the person as worthy of special treatment.  It is part of succession planning and talent development.  Might even get the deal done more efficiently!

Law departments based in expensive areas, such as the major coastal cities and Chicago, often think that their compensation must be higher than that of competitor’s law departments in the hinterlands.  The more modest cost of living, they assume, allows the remote departments to pay less.

The trouble is, compensation surveys don’t confirm this supposition.  As was explained to me during a study of pharmaceutical comp levels, the cultural and other attractions of large cities have value to many lawyers as compared to lower-cost, less populated locations, so compensation among the lawyers in the top law departments do not show marked cost-of-living differences.  This still strikes me as counter-intuitive, but statistics don’t lie.

I used to recommend that legal departments prune their collections of titles   Rather than proliferate titles, I said, stick to the basic trio structure, Corporate Level Legal Level – Specialty.  For instance, VP Associate General Counsel – Litigation.  Since many in-house lawyers are not officers, they would have a two-part title: Assistant General Counsel – Widgets.

But I now confess that the elegance of economy – a minimalist view of what to call people — and the predictability of similarity – everyone knows immediately where they stand – has lately given ground.  I have come to feel that while law departments operate under headcount straitjackets, while base compensation soars up to 2.75% each year, while promotion opportunities come about infrequently, why not stroke people with titles?  A bouquet of titles doesn’t burden the law department, but they buoy the person bestowed.  Senior Assistant General Counsel, Securities and Compliance.  Ornamental titles might irk Human Resources, I suppose, but they too ought to support retention efforts, which titles are to some degree.  Neither do titles imply compensation changes.  Maybe title expansion is why the term “chief legal officer” has become more common; we now see all kinds of General Counsel – Asia Pacific and the like.

Let me be provocative.  Given equal intelligence and work ethic between someone admitted to the bar after law school and a paralegal, both working the same time in a law department, what is the practical difference between them?  Both will have to learn the vast majority of law and practice they apply through on-the-job training, since law school offers mostly theory, history, and concepts.  Both will display whatever client relationship skills they have; both will develop themselves professionally as is their wont.  I don’t really think that adherence to the professional code of lawyer conduct makes that much difference when compared to the ethics and sense of what’s right of a well-balanced paralegal.

My point is that the line blurs between the two positions if you hold ability and drive constant.  Knowledge, toughness, creativity, client savvy, and professional objectivity must come to them both or pre-exist in them both.

If I am right, then why don’t law departments have more than one paralegal for every four lawyers, which is the benchmark ratio?  Maybe because, if you are interested in the law and have the ability, you go to law school.  The pool of comparable paralegals is shallow compared to that of lawyers.  Maybe it’s because business unit managers want to be counseled by “a lawyer,” not simply someone smart who knows the law and can apply it.

Having recently spent several days with a law department whose lawyers work in open cubicles, I confess to some amazement. From my first day at Weil Gotshal, all through my selling days and the past 16 years of consulting I have had my own office. Not only is there much more room for books and piles, but I have privacy. Yes, these lawyers can dart off to one of the non-reserveable privacy rooms, but that is inconvenient.

The cost is certainly far far less, and this was in London where per square meter costs soar. But I must say it was a shock. Makes you rely much more on email I think, because that is private. Anderson ‘s legal department in Chicago was also open cubicle.