Articles Posted in Thoughts/Observations

Every month the 22 lawyers of Coca-Cola in Europe dial in for a conference call. (Every quarter the entire legal staff calls in.). For the monthly calls, according to a supplement in the ACC Docket, June 2010 after 32, “the chair, who sets the agenda for the calls and distributes it in advance, rotates among the participants.” An excellent idea! Have a different direct report responsible for each call or meeting.

Whenever you empower members of the law department to shape and run something, creativity and involvement results. Whether it is the bi-annual offsite, the CLE program, development of a mentoring initiative or something else, people buy into the activity more if they have input into it, and in direct proportion I believe (See my post of Jan. 2, 2009: grass roots knowledge management works better.). When the top imposes a decision, there can be resistance or passivity. When the rank and file pitch in and create what they think will best, there will be more insights and loyalty (See my post of July 18, 2006: men are more command oriented, women more inclusive.).

Every month the 22 lawyers of Coca-Cola in Europe dial in for a conference call. (Every quarter the entire legal staff calls in.). For the monthly calls, according to a supplement in the ACC Docket, June 2010 after 32, “the chair, who sets the agenda for the calls and distributes it in advance, rotates among the participants.” An excellent idea! Have a different direct report responsible for each call or meeting.

Whenever you empower members of the law department to shape and run something, creativity and involvement results. Whether it is the bi-annual offsite, the CLE program, development of a mentoring initiative or something else, people buy into the activity more if they have input into it, and in direct proportion I believe (See my post of Jan. 2, 2009: grass roots knowledge management works better.). When the top imposes a decision, there can be resistance or passivity. When the rank and file pitch in and create what they think will best, there will be more insights and loyalty (See my post of July 18, 2006: men are more command oriented, women more inclusive.).

A complimentary dummy book from EMC on in-house discovery groups. I had to smile at the recent SuperConference when I saw that EMC was handing out complimentary copies of the familiar yellow and black explanations for morons: Jake Frazier, Bringing eDiscovery In-House for Dummies (Wiley 2008). The 38-pager offers very basic ideas on ediscovery programs within corporations, and it has some marketing material by EMC. www.emc.com

Instrumental variables and outside-counsel cost control. Instrumental variables are how economists infelicitously refer to factors that influence a cause and effect pattern (See my post of Dec. 12, 2006: instrumental variable for attraction of good lawyers and productivity; and April 8, 2007: size of company and compensation of specialists.). When you collect many facts and use regression to show how much each of them explains an outcome, you ought to watch out for instrumental variables. An instrumental variable does not itself belong in the regression, it is correlated with what you think are the explanatory variables (the facts), and it is uncorrelated with the error term (the residual that isn’t explained by your facts).

Here is an example. Perhaps you believe that hiring well-regarded law firms and partners from Ivy League law schools – two facts you could collect about many of your firms — reduces your total legal spend. An instrumental variable lurking in your regression might be the maturity of your company or its size, both of which may contribute much more to the total of your legal spend.

The gradual move toward more and better data for general counsel has continued of late, or even picked up. We might be in the first year of a Decade of Data, given the developments and potentialities of the kind summarized below.

1. Real Rate Report of TyMetrix on billing rates of law firms and costs of matters (See my post of June 2, 2010: hourly rates of US partners; and June 3, 2010: “standard billing rate” is illusory.).

2. Litigation Monitor of HubbardOne on lawsuits by corporation and law firm.

Proportion of complex legal work in law departments is low and complexity does not equal high value (April 6, 2010)

As a quote suggests, a general counsel might look to offshore providers to dispatch routine work and hope thereby to elevate the amount of complex and valued work done inside.

Plurality of matters are handled by no more than one partner and one associate? (April 9, 2010)

New embedded metaposts, one for each finger, as well as the number of posts they cite (See my post of May 24, 2010: Part XLVII).

1. Bidders’ teleconferences (See my post of May 28, 2010: bidders’ conferences in connection with RFPs with 6 references.).

2. Budgets from outside counsel, inflated (See my post of May 31, 2010: padded budgets by outside counsel on matters with 7 references.).

A table in the FTI Journal, Spring 2010 at 39, counts new filings of international arbitrations per year going back to 2000. It covers 14 arbitral institutions. In 2008, the top four by number of new filings were AAA-ICDR (US, 703), the International Chamber of Commerce (France, 663), the Hong Kong International Arbitration Center (China, 602), and CIETAC (China, 548). Altogether, the 14 institutions reported 3,000 new filings two years ago.

Filings involving the developing world numbered 1,347 in 2008, while filings of the developed world numbered 1,653.

International arbitration is big business, to be sure, but considered in light of the 60,000 or so law departments in the world, for one in twenty of them to have an international arbitration in a given year casts the data in more human terms.

Almost as ubiquitous as little blue pills are posts on this blog about the world’s largest pharmaceutical company.

Here they are about Pfizer in chronological order (See my post of Oct.1, 2005: Laura Kibbe and internal discovery team; Feb. 14, 2007: standard for handling litigation documents; Feb. 25, 2007: secondees; March 3, 2007: its products-liability panel; March 12, 2007: Pfizer’s Partnering Program; March 13, 2007: Pfizer’s P3 pain [two posts]; May 26, 2007: CEO was its previous general counsel; Dec. 12, 2007: data warehouse; March 20, 2008: interim GC appointed after Alan Waxman resigned; June 11, 2008 #4: Kibbe decamps; Sept. 12, 2008: transitioning cases to new firm; Sept. 12, 2008: detailed article on Pfizer’s RFP process; Dec. 11, 2008: diversity initiative; Dec. 14, 2008: diversity conference for firms; Feb. 16, 2009: uses decision tree analysis; Aug. 5, 2009: evaluations of law firms; Aug. 13, 2009: tiered discounts; Aug. 28, 2009: requires value reports from firms; Jan. 12, 2010: three firms band together to serve it; and Jan. 12, 2010: some questions about its huge fixed-fee arrangement.).

Embedded metaposts, ten more of them, as well as their census of back references (See my post of April 21, 2010: Part XLVI), plus their back references.

1. Artificial intelligence (See my post of April 21, 2010: AI and legal applications with 9 references and 2 metaposts]

2. Law firm innovation (See my post of April 7, 2010: innovation by law firms with 6 references.).

GCs who report to the CEO are paid more, and a few thoughts on reasons why (March 2, 2010)

It could be that they report to someone lower than the CEO, with a lower compensation ceiling. Or they are less experience or manage fewer functions.

Legal departments of US companies that do business worldwide will steadily disperse around the globe (March 2, 2010)