Articles Posted in This Blog

Numbered lists of steps – 10 ways to reduce outside counsel costs, for example – appeal to many people. A list presupposes that the compiler gave some thought to which points were most important. A list implicitly claims that who put it together knows what they are talking about and exercised judgment. A list lightens information overload.

As it turns out, I to honor these principles on this blog and often try to enumerate primary considerations, even putting them in priority order (See my post of June 26, 2009: 5 key sourcing tactics; July 22, 2009: 5 distortions that affect groups; June 29, 2009: 6 challenges for productivity metrics; July 15, 2009: 6 disadvantages of decentralized hiring of lawyers; July 4, 2009: 7 suggestions for sourcing professionals; 7 similarities between contract and matter management systems; July 5, 2009: 8 differences between cost and value; Aug. 10, 2009: 8 myths procurement harbors; March 2, 2009: 9 myths inside attorneys hold about their management of outside counsel; Sept. 23, 2009: 10 missing metrics about outside counsel; Feb. 12, 2009: 10 upsides of the recession; July 20, 2009: 11 reasons why a law department might transfer a case; March 1, 2009: 11 techniques to unify a global legal team; and Oct. 19, 2009: a dozen arguments against convergence.).

In a rare departure from my Presbyterian style of just the facts or only the ideas, here is a photograph. That’s my wonderful wife, Anne, next to me, lest you be unsure who is who. Just for the record, my little guy, Will, age 6, is not actually brain-dead, but he hasn’t learned to adopt the smile-for-the-picture-and-look-normal” pose that adults generally aspire to.

One puzzling finding struck to me when I checked the latest poll results of who visits this blog? As of today, 111 people have responded to my poll on the upper right. Law department lawyers are exactly half of them and law department non-lawyers another 10 percent.

What struck me is that law firm lawyers make up a mere 10 percent. This surprisingly low percentage suggests lack of interest by those lawyers in how their legal department clients operate. Close to a third of the material posted here concerns relations with outside counsel, yet outside counsel don’t seem to care (or they don’t take the time to respond to a two-second poll). Almost as odd, a tiny 4.5 percent of the poll respondents are law firm non-lawyers (presumably, marketing staff). Law firms of any size have marketing support, so why wouldn’t tap in?

The name of this blog may put off law firm visitors. And certainly there are many more blogs aimed squarely at law firms. Still, as I close in on 4,800 posts – a tremendous store of ideas for how legal departments view and use external counsel and even a blog book on the topic – it leaves me wondering why the readership is not skewed more toward law firms (See my post of Aug. 13, 2009 #1: results from 81 respondents; and Aug. 3, 2009: first 50 respondents.). .

This post continues my series of thanks and gratitude. Both are due when other blogs or websites cite one of my posts or include me on their blog roll. I have thanked 53 so far, and here add another 13 (See my post of June 17, 2009: 14 blogs/websites that have directed readers here; June 26, 2009: 13 more referral sources; July 10, 2009: 13 more referral sites; and July 19, 2009: another baker’s dozen.).

aboveandbeyondkm.com/ (Mary Abraham, Esq.)

Dolphinsoftware.wordpress.com/ (Dolphin Software)

The difference between normative economics and positive economics comes from Deirdre McCloskey, How to Be Human Though an Economist (U. of Mich. 2000) at 62-63. As the distinction applies to managers of in-house lawyers, a normative view says whether a management decision is good or bad (practically, morally, financially, etc.). A positive view merely describes the management decision and its context, but does not evaluate it.

Stated differently elsewhere: “Positive theory attempts to describe the world; normative to offer prescriptions for action.” The latter version comes from William Breit and Barry Hirsch, Lives of the Laureates – Twenty-three Nobel Economists (MIT 2009) at 173 (William F. Sharpe speaking).

Much of this blog falls into the positive camp; I describe a practice or a perspective and stop. Relatively few of the blog posts here are explicitly normative; I am wary of recommendations out of context and best practices out of touch.

So far, 50 people have been good enough to click on the poll to the right and indicate their position. The plurality are law department lawyers (46%), followed by law firm lawyers (16%) and service providers (14 percent). Non-lawyer members of law departments account for 12 percent of those who answered the poll, while “Other” and non-lawyers at law firms were 6 percent each.

In short, those in law departments who took the poll totaled 58 percent; law firm respondents totaled 22 percent; and all others (mostly vendors to legal departments and others in corporations) make up the remaining 20 percent.

Here are the ten best from my 99 posts in June 2009. If the brief description of the post entices you, click on the post title to read it all. If you would these posts in a file, email me and I will be happy to send them to you in Word.

A calculation of value added by a law department (June 29, 2009)

One legal department’s calculation of how it saves its client corporation millions of dollars every year.

Just as this blogger does not try for encyclopedic pieces or comprehensive treatments of topics, he no longer writes traditional book reviews. But he will plunder thoughtful points from a book, and has done so abundantly with Leigh Dance’s stimulating book, Bright Ideas: Insights from Legal Luminaries Worldwide (Mill City Press 2009). Each of its 26 chapters are 3-5 pages or so, easy to read, and informative. About a third each of them come from senior inside lawyers, partners at major firms, and others such as consultants and journalists.

My extracts from Leigh’s book have covered many topics (See my post of July 7, 2009: GCs urged to be decisive; July 16, 2009: three-way distribution of responsibilities in a global legal department; July 16, 2009: soft skills for in-house attorneys; July 16, 2009: SharePoint application at Hilton Hotels; July 16, 2009: general counsel need stamina if they travel much; July 16, 2009: the demands for travel on general counsel; July 29, 2009: be fair to outside counsel and keep in mind what they go through for you; July 30, 2009: professional management in law firms percolates to law departments; and July 30, 2009: the drip-drip of law firm rainmakers.).

Through its first 4,500 posts and 52 months, this blog piled up 903,932 words. The Word document in which I have combined those posts has margins of a half inch on all sides and totals 1,456 pages. Metrics nuts will immediately note that the profusion amounts to 0.323 pages per post – three to a page – and 201 words per – two or three paragraphs usually. This post, for example, has 155 words. About 45 of the posts came from guest authors (See my post of July 30, 2009: six guest authors.), but the rest are my responsibility. An additional 32, words and 74 pages cover the 153 most recent posts.

I would have thought I might have suffered by now from episodes of writer’s block. Quite the contrary, piles of material to be writer surround my desk – it’s a case of writer’s blog.

Ideas and issues about management of corporate legal functions thrive outside of what I encounter or think up. To help remedy my blind spots, I have welcomed to date and very much appreciated the insights of six co-authors: Brad Blickstein, George Cunningham, Bruce Heintz, Jeff Kaplan, Jane DiRenzo Pigott, and Robert Unterberger.

They have written about their specialties starting as far back as February 2007 (See my post of Feb. 18, 2007: Cunningham on records management; April 27, 2007: Blickstein on vendors to law departments; Nov. 30, 2007: Pigott on diversity; Feb. 16, 2009: Heintz on law firm views of legal departments; Feb. 22, 2009: Kaplan on compliance and ethics; and June 15, 2009: Unterberger on offshoring.).

Other readers have sent me ideas that I have reworked into posts, with full attribution, and I am pleased to do so when material sent to me fits the style and goals of this blog.