Abolish engagement letters (aka retention letters) from law departments (Nov. 1, 2010).
Abolish the template letter with its standard recitation of expectations and obligations, all of which should be covered by outside counsel guidelines.
Kudos for full allocation at JPMorgan Chase of legal expenses to business units that incurred them (Nov. 1, 2010).
In The Little Prince, by Antoine de Saint Exupery, the narrator remarks that “Grownups love figures.” He urges readers to show forbearance (at 16-17) because “But certainly, for us who understand life, figures are a matter of indifference.”
Not to me. Not on the tiny planet of this blog, where I protect the roses of good ideas, root out wrong-headed baobobs, and clean up various volcanoes of practices. This the Little Prince and his sheep might smile at indulgently, more so because I admire figures.
Unable apparently to understand life, I turn every now and then to figures that mark my professional efforts. It is of no little pride to me to look back on almost 600,000 life-time page views on this blog, which is about to blow out six candles. Nor do I regard it as trivial that 6,000 posts crowd these pages (See my post of Dec. 14, 2010: three posts a day for 70 months.). For all that efforts, close to 1,000 readers have added me to their RSS feeds, 445 members have joined my LinkedIn group (Law Department Management), and 350 newsletter subscribers have signed-up. Surely, a princely output when described with figures.
My last update on articles published by me was back in February (See my post of Feb. 4, 2010: seven articles published in 2009). Since then, the never-resting pen has written seven more. Click on the link if you would like the article. Better, let me know what you think of what I wrote.
This post stands proudly at the front of a line of 6,000! Seventy months ago, on Feb. 20, 2005, the first post stood up and since then the procession has conga-lined its way to this milestone.
A few thoughts occurred to me as I reflected on the outpouring and commemorated this moment.
Patterns of posts. Some of my material arises from the patterns I have set myself to follow. For example, metaposts never seem to end, and in fact as I accumulate more and more posts, there seem to be more opportunities to stitch together bundles of related posts. I make it my practice to accumulate metaposts into groups of ten and publish the collections with URLs. Fifty of them have appeared. I periodically tip my hat to other websites and blogs that refer readers to me. My blog book reviews follow a format. Another practice the last year or so has been to cull and abbreviate the ten best posts of two months before. My bi-monthly National Law Journal articles get a regular nod as do my bi-weekly columns for InsideCounsel. These pattern-posts keep a sort of discipline.
Below are the 21 books most recently read by me and cited here, with the first post given even though there may be more than one post. In fact, the total posts from these books is close to 35 (See my post of Feb. 1, 2009: 13 books cited on this blog; and Aug. 17, 2009: 10 more books.). .
Chris Anderson, Free: The Future of a Radical Price (Hyperion 2009) (See my post of Sept. 28, 2009: the Dunbar number.).
Michael Blastland and Andrew Dilnot, The Numbers Game (Gotham Books 2009 (See my post of April 23, 2010: $2,500 per lawyer per day.).
I think about terms used on this blog and how to define them; I periodically collect those definitions; and I even consider at times their purposes. In what follows I expand on each of those three points.
As to the terms themselves, here are 16 more definitions collected since the most recent compilation (See my post of Oct. 3, 2010: baseline legal spend; Sept. 22, 2009: commodity and complexity; July 26, 2009 #4: competencies; Nov. 19, 2010: core competencies; Dec. 3, 2009: R&D costs; Aug. 17, 2010: culture; April 16, 2010: loyalty as defined by Tom Sager; Nov. 24, 2010: Pareto optimality; Aug. 6, 2010: processes; April 25, 2009: processes, policies, practices, and procedures; Aug. 19, 2010: processes once again; Nov. 26, 2010: Compliance, Audit, Risk Management; and Law Aug. 2, 2010: value for money.). Additionally, 18 months ago I did some curating (See my post of April 18, 2009: three definitions and five metaposts with 91 other terms.).
With pack-rat instincts I have collected five metaposts (See my post of May 3, 2006: 32 word explanations; Aug. 26, 2006: 10 definitions; Nov. 26, 2006: 13 definitions; Dec. 5, 2007: 11 words and terms; Jan. 15, 2009: 26 definitions; July 19, 2009: 11 more definitions; and Aug. 5, 2010: 31 definitions.).
Always trying to keep order on this unruly blog, I offer the ten most recent metaposts.
Analysis of benchmark data (See my post of Dec. 3, 2010: benchmark analytics with 13 references and 1 meta.).
Bonuses of lawyers II (See my post of Nov. 27, 2010: bonuses of lawyers with 15 references.).
My collection of metaposts now numbers 523, citing 6,807 back references (See my post of Jan. 29, 2010: commentary on the 420 metaposts as of then.). That means an average of 13 posts cited per metaposts. (The largest metapost, on law departments cited frequently, includes 169 references.) It means this industrious blogger has kept a pace of eight or nine metaposts per month for nearly six years. These metaposts includes references to 242 other metaposts. If more than five metaposts are cited, I call it a hyperpost. Hyperposts now number more than a two dozen.
Naturally, many posts get referred to more than once and the same holds for metaposts. Even so, weaving and creating, cross-referencing and expanding, this beehive of thoughts about law department operations continues to build and elaborate.
My latest newsletter just went out to my hundreds of subscribers. It reprints the five posts that were most frequently viewed or clicked on during the previous thirty days and adds some comments by me. Nothing fancy, the newsletter embodies my conviction that all ideas about law department operations contain associated ideas. A blog-post candle attracts moth ideas and all I have to do is let the crowd vote with their online choices to tell me which candles deserve moth harvesting.
If you would like the latest newsletter, email me: Rees(at)ReesMorrison(dot)com. If you would like a free subscription, click on the notice to the right and complete the few details.
Once aware of metaphors, you notice they spring up everywhere – to invoke yet another one (See my post of Oct. 12, 2010: metaphors enable cognition; and Nov. 14, 2005: metaphors of managers.).
My blog posts are dappled with metaphors – another metaphor – so I searched back for explicit uses of the term and let the cistern fill – there I go again (See my post of May 20, 2005: the color red; April 9, 2006: hair loss; April 27, 2005: budget no farther than your headlights; April 15, 2006: “sweeping up after the elephants”; Dec. 23, 2005: racehorses; May 26, 2006: rubber and roads; June 5, 2006: rungs of the career ladder; Aug. 20, 2006: evolution; Aug. 20, 2006: foxes and hedgehogs; Aug. 24, 2006: icebergs; Aug. 28, 2006: de Bono’s six hats; Oct. 12, 2006: law department as sponge; Dec. 17, 2006: contracts should breathe; Feb. 4, 2008: Hulk and Seven Dwarves; April 9, 2008: twins, braids, and DNA as metaphors for the number of fundamental management concerns; June 25 2008: evolutionary economics; June 11, 2008: autarkic legal department; Oct. 22, 2008: build for flexibility; Aug. 4, 2009: funnel metaphor for budgets; June 4, 2009 #3: helicopter managers; July 23, 2009: “When you go to battle, you hire the army not the soldier”; Aug. 4, 2009 #2: borrowings from physics; Oct. 28, 2009: punctuated equilibrium; Nov. 13, 2009: holy grail of ROI; and Dec. 27, 2009: metaphor of metrics: thermometer or thermostat.).
Innumerable other metaphorical spot the leopard of this blog, but with financial failure and stock market crashes all around, let me not heat a dead bourse.
Law Department Management Blog