Articles Posted in Thoughts/Observations

Charles Christian and his informative Orange Rag, which targets mostly law firms, had in the most recent issue a note that “eBay has selected CT TyMetrix 360 as its global legal spend management platform. eBay’s legal department currently works with over 250 law firms around the world and will be using 360 for matter management and ebilling.

Inspired by Charles, I invite software vendors who sell to legal departments to send me their announcements of new users.

General announcements of new products and services for legal departments rarely interest me, but if a specific legal department has licensed your software, let me know. I will probably accumulate several announcements into one post.

The Executive Director, Darren Lee, of the National Association of Distinguished Neutrals, wrote me. I looked briefly at the group’s website which claims that “With over 400 members throughout the United States, the NADN is the largest public roster of experienced ADR attorneys on the internet.” The list is available at no cost.

I wrote Lee about law departments that have used the service. He replied: “[A]mongst the departments that have used the Florida Chapter website in the last few weeks: Geico Insurance; Raymond James Financial; DeAngelis Diamond Construction; Marriott International; TOP Constructions, Wal-Mart Stores East; [and] Armstrong Forensic Engineers.” He added: “Please keep in mind that when you say ‘used our services’, 99% of the time that simply means that firms/counsel have used the association websites (NADN.org, FloridaMediators.org, GeorgiaMediators.org, etc) to select, and then contact, a member attorney.”

One tiny game I have been playing has been to search this blog for references to large law departments when they submit data for my General Counsel Metrics benchmark survey. Recently, Bank of America did so I played the pied piper (See my post of April 13, 2007: Bank of America has some 2,000 subsidiaries; April 13, 2007: William Mostyn as Deputy General Counsel; July 29, 2007: Burton Award winner; Jan. 30, 2009: reductions in force after acquisition of Merrill Lynch; April 18, 2009: lawyers in merged law departments must reapply for jobs; Nov. 13, 2009: criticism of the reporting lines of general counsel; and Feb. 2, 2010: former general counsel on list of most ethical.).

A previous post ferreted out all the posts for eight legal departments (See my post of July 13, 2009: Cisco, DuPont, FMC, GE, McDonalds, Microsoft, UTC and Wal-Mart with 169 internal references and six metaposts.)

More recently I have done the same for American Express, Barclays, HSBC, and Pfizer (See my post of July 30, 2010: American Express; April 21, 2010: Barclays; Jan. 21, 2010: HSBC Bank; and May 26, 2010: Pfizer.).

One tiny game I have been playing has been to search this blog for references to large law departments when they submit data for my General Counsel Metrics benchmark survey. Recently, Bank of America did so I played the pied piper (See my post of April 13, 2007: Bank of America has some 2,000 subsidiaries; April 13, 2007: William Mostyn as Deputy General Counsel; July 29, 2007: Burton Award winner; Jan. 30, 2009: reductions in force after acquisition of Merrill Lynch; April 18, 2009: lawyers in merged law departments must reapply for jobs; Nov. 13, 2009: criticism of the reporting lines of general counsel; and Feb. 2, 2010: former general counsel on list of most ethical.).

A previous post ferreted out all the posts for eight legal departments (See my post of July 13, 2009: Cisco, DuPont, FMC, GE, McDonalds, Microsoft, UTC and Wal-Mart with 169 internal references and six metaposts.)

More recently I have done the same for American Express, Barclays, HSBC, and Pfizer (See my post of July 30, 2010: American Express; April 21, 2010: Barclays; Jan. 21, 2010: HSBC Bank; and May 26, 2010: Pfizer.).

Here are four points drawn from Legal Strat. Rev., Summer 2010 at 23, which interviewed Sony Ericsson’s general counsel, Jonathan Pearl. (As an editorial note, these points – and other collections of points about a particular legal department – don’t justify a full post but neither should they be tossed into my Morsels. They exist half-way, so to speak, so I try to have the header capture the essence of the ideas.).

Pearl does not subscribe to convergence theory. He deliberately uses a large number of law firms “partly to diversify and partly to ensure that we have some of the better people tied up with us.” That is to say, if you have retained a firm you have conflicted it out of representing a plaintiff against you. If you narrow down your set of counsel to a handful, hordes of other firms can act against you (See my post of Feb. 18, 2009: blanket waivers and conflicts policies; and May 1, 2005: five conflict of interest puzzles.).

Pearl does subscribe to virtual-firm theory. “We split the work on certain cases between bigger, more expensive firms and smaller, cheaper firms.” Staff intensive tasks go to the less costly firm while strategic and analytic tasks go to the more experienced big firm (See my post of Aug. 10, 2007: virtual firms with 6 references; and April 12, 2010: managerial load with multiple service providers.).

A recent post summarizes IBM’s establishment of global legal delivery units (See my post of Sept. 9, 2010: two centers with dozens of lawyers.). The same article from which that development came, Legal Strat. Rev., Summer 2010 at 14, contains several other worthy points about legal department operations.

One is that the legal department has created “doing law with less” websites, “a series of portals that provide legal updates to internal clients.” The website has overviews of various legal issues, which sound to me like primers, and frequently asked questions, all to bring clients up to speed before they reach out to the legal department.

Second, the general counsel explicitly puts people first. Robert Weber says “Any legal department’s biggest challenge comes in the way that it deploys and enables talent.” Well put and so true. Later, he restates the point: “Legal is nothing if not a talent business.” I have always felt the good talent that is engaged trumps any structure, technology, or allocation of roles.

At a conference, it is easy to daydream, lose yourself with your iPhone, edit a memorandum, and generally miss what the panelists say. Or, you can focus on extracting from even the dullest presentation nuggets that inspire you about law department management.

Well, I can at least.

The InsideCounsel SuperConference in May proved to be a fertile source of ideas for me. Even though able to attend only some of the many, many sessions, I wrote 17 posts. Many have to do with outside counsel management (See my post of May 26, 2010: liability of general counsel if the fail to pursue alternative fee arrangements; May 28, 2010: why companies do not track spending data; May 31, 2010: assessments of a department by the firms it retains; June 1, 2010: boundary conditions for alternative fee arrangements; June 2, 2010: $340 as a median hourly rate for outside counsel; June 3, 2010: standard hourly rate is a myth; and July 14, 2010: approval required by junior lawyers to retain counsel.).

References on this blog to legal departments in Africa are hard to find. I am sure hundreds and hundreds of them thrive and manage very well, but their exploits have only rarely come to my attention (See my post of Sept. 17, 2005: De Beers group general counsel retired but remained a consultant; Nov. 13, 2005: South African requirements for legal diversity; and March 10, 2005: Kenya and external counsel costs.).

Indirect clues, however, assure me that an in-house community exists in Africa. Where there is a thriving legal community with low costs, there will be offshoring providers (See my post of March 6, 2009 #3: LPO provider based in South Africa; Feb. 9, 2010: possible LPO activity in Morocco; and Jan. 27, 2006: Accenture and Mauritius.). Where there are legal departments, there are conferences for in-house lawyers (See my post of March 9, 2006: a conference for in-house lawyers in South Africa.). Where there are law firms, there are corporate clients (See my post of June 20, 2007: alliance of law firms called Lex Africa that had 23 members from a number of countries.). Where there are lawyers there is software, such as document assembly packages (See my post of April 5, 2007: GhostFill from Korbitec in South Africa.).

Hard as it may be to get traction for a change within a single legal department, it is significantly harder to corral several law departments to march in one direction. Yet it happens. Several general counsel agree to do something jointly and the resulting shared effort, a consortium, can achieve more than any individual department could. All associations for general counsel contain the seeds, at the least, of collective action, even if only sharing information (See my post of March 1, 2009: GC groups with 12 references.).

In recent months I have noted a number of instances or possibilities (See my post of July 4, 2009: database compiled jointly of diversity firms; Aug. 20, 2009: statements signed by groups of general counsel, including my prediction of an environmental one; Aug. 21, 2009: Pro Bono Institute; Dec. 7, 2009: shared diversity questionnaire for law firms; Jan. 11, 2010: shared evaluations of law firms; Feb. 25, 2010: pooling of purchases by smaller legal departments; and June 21, 2010: reward system for knowledge base contributors.).

Before, I wrote about law departments and their united efforts to evaluate outside counsel (See my post of Nov. 5, 2009: collective assessments by law departments of their firms with 10 references.).

The General Counsel of LG Electronics spoke at the InsideCounsel SuperConference on May 25 th. I note three of his practices. One is that his lawyers train ad agencies on the basics of intellectual property, such as trademarks and copyrights. His department also prepares a list of trademarks and usage guidelines.

The department produces the quarterly Legal Gazette which goes out to clients. (See my post of July 20, 2009: newsletters by legal departments with 6 references.).

https://www.lawdepartmentmanagementblog.com/newsletters-produced-by-in-house-legal-groups/