Ten more metaposts and the number of previous posts they cite (See my post of July 8, 2010: Part XLVIX).
In light of the recent amendments to Sarbanes-Oxley, I rummaged through my past posts to find earlier references to the original legislation. Several posts considered the hit to legal department budgets that compliance with SOX would entail (See my post of May 30, 2005: SOX expenses; June 15, 2005: additional costs of Section 404 compliance; March 29, 2010 #2: additional compliance costs of publicly traded companies; and May 6, 2010: costs imposed by SOX.).
Some posts are about substantive legal issues raised by SOX that burden legal departments (See my post of Feb. 18, 2006 #2: more than 35% of Boards had retained their own lawyers since Sarbanes-Oxley passed; Feb. 28, 2006: slight rise in securities class actions after Sarbanes took effect; and Nov. 10, 2007: GCs hire personal lawyers to represent them.).
Most of the posts, unsurprisingly, discuss how SOX might affect the organization and workload of legal departments in publicly traded companies (See my post of March 11, 2005: would SOX push legal departments to reorganize; May 10, 2005 requirement that companies value their IP; May 20, 2005: merger of GC and CCO roles; Aug. 24, 2005: intranets and concerns with SOX; Nov. 24, 2005 #2: DuPont did not add legal staff to deal with Sarbanes-Oxley; June 5, 2006: encourages hourly billing; June 13, 2006: encourages online training programs; April 22, 2007: audit committee checklist in software inspired by SOX; Nov. 30, 2008: encouraged all practicing lawyers to report to the top legal officer; Jan. 21, 2009: up the line reporting obligation; May 20, 2009: audit trails in matter management systems for controls; and Dec. 14, 2009: SEC Commissioner supports legal departments.).
As I read in Law Tech. News, July 2010 at 38, that American Express has to its credit “110 attorneys and 90 support staff in 12 countries,” I wondered why there was so little about that department in these pages. My posts are from two years ago and older, and several came from just one speech.
As with many legal departments that are quite large, they go about their business like a placid lake and little about their management practices creates even ripples (See my post of Jan. 25, 2006: American Express’ patent on law-firm rate increases; Jan. 25, 2006: fixed fee arrangements of American Express; Feb. 18, 2006: budget practices at Amex; July 27, 2007: uses Serengeti Tracker; April 27, 2008: patent licensing fees; and May 3, 2008: American Express and patent services and discovery.). Not one reference in more than two years.
Emails before bed or a double espresso. An item in PC Today, June 2010 at 8, quotes a sleep expert: “Checking emails just before bed halts the production of sleep enhancing melatonin and has the same effect as drinking a double espresso.” Since I routinely check my emails at night, that was a wakeup call (See my post of June 29, 2009: sleep with 10 references.).
Comments on page views, posts, and comments on this blog. By July 13, 2010 according to TypePad, this 5.5 year old blog has had 524,031 lifetime pageviews. That is the viewing history based on 5,600 blog posts, which means about 100 pageviews per post. A total of 509 comments on the blog means that for every ten posts, someone leaves a comment that I allow to remain. Mind you, I delete perhaps half the comments because they are spam, so the 509 means substantive comments (See my post of Feb. 16, 2008: shout-out to those who have posted comments.).
The shrinking funnel from possibilities to patents to profit. Research in 1997 found that “About 3,000 raw ideas are needed to produce 150 patent applications and, ultimately, one commercial success.” The quote comes from the Acad. Mgt. Rev., Oct. 2005 at 860. If that progression holds today, it sheds some light on the workload on patent lawyers in law departments. The same article says that “the number of patents a company holds is positively associated with sales and with stock performance” (See my post of March 21, 2006: slender payoff from patent activity; and Jan. 3, 2006: value delivered from patents.).
Resource Dependence Theory is the study of organizations and how their external resources affect their behavior. It may have something to offer for general counsel, but I am not sure. The procurement of external resources is an important tenet of both the strategic and tactical management of any legal department. Courtesy of Wikipedia, the basic argument of RDT can be summarized in terms of legal departments (my translation) as follows:
• Law departments are dependent on resources such as vendors, service providers and law firms
• These resources ultimately originate from the environment of organizations
Both are unmeasurable before the event. Law department can’t a priori state hard numbers associated with them.
Both are enormously value laden. Fundamental beliefs of people shape strongly how they understand and interpret the terms.
Both swim in contingent circumstances. Context powerfully influences what the two terms mean at a given time and under given facts.
Ten more collections of posts on a topic (metaposts), bedecked with the number of posts they cite (See my post of June 8, 2010: Part XLVIII).
Benchmark methodology (See my post of June 23, 2010: methodological considerations in benchmarking with 24 references.).
Emotions (See my post of June 18, 2010: emotions with 8 references.).
Legal informatics has a website. Dr. Adam Wyner’s blog on legal informatics for legal professionals looks very interesting. It covers Web. 2.0 concepts in the legal field.
Language Logic Law Software
National differences in pay and the effect on total legal spending as a percentage of revenue. My recent column for InsideCounsel (June 21, 2010) combined Laurence Simons compensation data and General Counsel Metrics benchmark data on internal spending in the context of comparisons of corporate legal costs between countries. Compensation differences account for a significant portion of the differences in internal spending ratios.
The essence of contingency theory is that the value of management practices depend on the contingencies of the situation. What happens in a legal department is not the inevitable working out of predetermined linkages and rules but rather depends on all kinds of factors that are, well, contingent.
The “it all depends” theory may sound simplistic, but assessing the contingencies on which decisions depend and their relative influence can be very complex. Many management academics explain their findings in terms of contingency theory and try to identify and measure the conditions under which things will likely occur. In terms of law departments, one example might be to study which is more important and to what degree, as between otherwise similar departments with many paralegals and those with few.
A contingency is a relationship between two phenomena. If one phenomenon exists, then a conclusion can be drawn about another phenomenon. For example, if a larger number of paralegals allows more delegation so total inside costs decline, then that is a contingency. The outcome of hundreds of practices regarding outside counsel depend on so many variables that the theoretical explanations of contingency thinking will be inevitable.
I hope these ten interest you also and compel you to click on the link to read the entire post. Meanwhile, I have been toiling with the set from the full year since I started. This blog will scoop everyone with the findings!
Value from a law firm: defined ex post but not ex ante (May 10, 2010)
It is fruitless to define value of legal services in advance (ex ante); it can only be
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