When a Corporate Counsel reporter interviewed Christine Jones, the general counsel of domain-name company Go Daddy, the resulting profile mentions that she, the reporter, had read some of Jones’ “tweets and blog posts.” My sleuthing turned up her blog, The Rudy Syndrome, and I officially welcome her to the fold of blogging CLOs (See my post of
Before you get too excited, however, note that she has published only three posts this year, the most recent one in mid-March. It reminds me of the neologism, cobwebsite, for a site covered with dust.
On her blog, At The Intersection, Pamela H. Woldow writes about such topics as general counsel, legal project management, alternative fee arrangements and what she perceives to be the rising tide of change. A former in-house lawyer turned consultant, Woldow addresses topics of interest both to law firms and law departments, hence the name at the intersection.
To keep up with this micro-niche of the blawgosphere, here are 19 blogs that current or former in-house lawyers publish.
Rich Baer, former general counsel of Qwest (See my post of March 21, 2011: Reliance on Counsel.).
Canadian law departments, Canada (See my post of April 14, 2011: law departments in Canada with 28 references.).
Capitalized expenses and hidden (See my post of April 20, 2011: capitalized expenses with 7 references.).
Administrative time demands (See my post of July 22, 2009: administrative time with 3 references and 18 metaposts.).
A full year has passed since my inaugural “Morrison on Metrics” column for InsideCounsel Exclusives. Quite a few of the columns (10) had to do with benchmarks: inside spend per lawyer correlated to outside spend; benchmarks across regions; are participants in benchmark surveys representative; anonymous participants; one country vs entire-globe department; normalized metrics; lawyers per paralegal by four regions; 2010 to 2011 on two metrics; paralegals and total legal spend; and matter management and benchmark markets.
Next most frequent were five columns on statistics: correlations; trimmed means and weighted averages; modes, maximum, minimum; inter-quartile, ranges, modes; and indices.
Two concerned compensation: lawyer compensation and performance and online sources of compensation data. The rest covered a variety of topics related to quantification: matter management and benchmark markets; cases vs FTE litigators; knowledge of metrics below GC; count cases and contracts not counseling; risk; inside spend means people; manipulate and game metrics; trend lines and equations; analytical discovery software; rhetoric, explanation, and analysis.
A second set of ten posts on columns I have written for InsideCounsel
Early on, I collected my first columns under Morrison on Metrics (See my post of Sept. 30, 2010: ten InsideCounsel columns, starting in May 2010.). Now I am back at it with an updated collection of ten more and their URLs.
Oct. 13, 2010: lawyers per paralegal as a staffing metric
At irregular intervals I have collected posts from this blog about specific countries. Canada beckoned, and it turns out there are at least 28 posts related to law departments in that country.
A few of them cover Canadian matters in general (See my post of May 31, 2005: case loads of in-house lawyers from Canada; March 19, 2006: hours inside vs. outside in Canada; May 14, 2006 #4: Canadian data on lines of reporting; May 31, 2005: growth of civil legal spending by Canadian businesses; March 19, 2006: application of 40/60 ratio to Canadian law departments; May 10, 2006: Canadian in-house challenges; Feb. 14, 2007: retrospective on Canadian in-house numbers of lawyers; May 24, 2007: chargeable hours; May 26, 2007: litigation handled by Canadian corporations; and May 27, 2007: considerations of Canadian in-house lawyers when choosing outside counsel.).
Many more of the posts cite specific departments (See my post of April 18, 2005: Manulife and departing lawyers; Aug. 31, 2005: billing policies at the Royal Bank of Canada; Aug. 31, 2005: Schering-Plough Canada; Feb. 14, 2007: profit center with SAP Canada; Feb. 14, 2007: difficulties in hiring lawyers and contract staff at Petro-Canada; Feb. 14, 2007: SAP Canada filed 1,700 patents in 2005; Feb. 16, 2007: grooming a general counsel with business experience at TransCanada; July 29, 2007: beyond traditional RFPs at RBC Financial; July 29, 2007: software at BMO; Nov. 24, 2007: coaching and SAP Canada; Sept. 19, 2008: facts about Bombardier; Feb. 14, 2009: demand management checklist at Royal Bank of Canada; Oct. 24, 2009: claimed savings by GE Canada; Nov. 10, 2009: net rating evaluations of outside counsel at GE Canada; Dec. 21, 2009: Canadian patent cases cost millions less than US patent cases; Feb. 4, 2010: Kruger Products and Serengeti; Sept. 27, 2010: Bombardier requires technology investments by its firms; and Dec. 19, 2010: fixed fee for core agreements of Bell Canada;.).
Anheuser-Busch InBev (See my post of March 28, 2011: Anheuser-Busch and InBev with 15 references.).
Checklists, etc (See my post of April 4, 2011: guidelines, checklists and annotations with 13 references and 1 meta.).
Decision-assistance (See my post of April 12, 2011: decision-making software with 10 references.).
A hazard for me as I select and write about something on LawDepartmentManagementBlog is that I am lured by novelty and frontiers. The nuts-and-bolts of management for law departments – think of substantive oversight, workflow, adequacy of coverage, bench strength as a few examples – are less enthralling to write about even though general counsel want ideas to help them with blocking and tackling. They can’t very often try razzle-dazzle new plays.
My idiosyncratic interests lead me to touch down on lots of new ideas. I enjoy concepts I have not thought about and the frontier exploits of law departments. To critics, that “intellectual tourism” may be far from the fundamental, meat-and-potatoes concerns that dominate running a legal team. To fans, I bring to their attention something they had not known or thought about in the context of law department effectiveness; you are still reading this blog.
Truth be told, I blog about what interests me and in a style that both appeals to me and lets me try to write better. To average three posts a day for more than six years and still get up in the morning looking forward to writing means there are rewards: curiosity satisfied, catholic range, a maturing prose style, and an accumulation of material online that may improve a little bit how well the legal industry operates.
Part LII of a collection of embedded metaposts, perhaps a florilegium!
Florilegium: a collection of short literary pieces. Please enjoy my metapost florilegium!
Law Department Management Blog