Articles Posted in Thoughts/Observations

Sergey Brin’s technique to test a candidate for an in-house law position. Ordinary people interview in the traditional mode (See my post of Sept. 3, 2008: techniques for those who interview.). Not Brin, one of Google’s billionaire co-founders. According to the Economist, Nov. 14, 2009 at 103, he “asks a candidate for a senior legal position to draw up a contract for the sale of Mr Brin’s soul to the devil.” Hellish indemnification and warranty provisions!

Path dependency in legal departments, especially for management innovation. The process of accumulating innovative knowledge is usually highly path (history) dependent and firm specific. “Path dependency” reeks of academic jargon but it means the commonsense idea that the way in which a legal department arrived at a particular practice depends greatly on its people, the work they did, its relations with its clients, and much more. For another department to crib from it is to risk failure, because the “path” of the cribber is very different (See my post of Feb.14, 2009: best practices with 24 references and one metapost.).

Synecdoche – lumping a large firm based on the work of a few of its lawyers. “Dechert does a good job for us,” “We like Cravath,” “Shea & Gould had irregular quality.” Every day, in-house lawyers generalize about hundreds of lawyers in one fell swoop, with broad conclusions based on no overall evidence or basis. Sporadic and individualistic evaluations done inside don’t justify such broad descriptions.

My three blog books (outside counsel management, talent management and structure) each compile several hundred posts on their topic, offer additional commentary to the structured layout, offer recommendations, and include many forms of indexes and search tools.

Starting today until Thanksgiving, when you buy one you will receive the other two blooks for free.

Click on the box in the upper right hand corner and add some holiday reading to your stuffing!

General counsel compete with their peer executives in a company. Humans being what they are, proud and possessive, it follows that general counsel compete at least some of the time with their peer executives. Notwithstanding the internal exchange of legal services for technical, personnel, financial, and physical support from other staff groups, each functional head elbows and crowds for budgetary funds, recognition from the CEO, additions of responsibility, headcount, respect and other prerogatives. The fates of some legal departments hang in the balance.

Varieties of correlation tests. A common type of correlation, known as the Pearson Product Moment Correlation, is appropriate when both variables are measured at an interval level. A wide variety of other types of correlations apply in other circumstances. For instance, with two ordinal variables, the Spearman rank Order Correlation (rho) or the Kendall rank order Correlation (tau) are appropriate. When one measure is a continuous interval level and the other is dichotomous (i.e., two-categories like yes or no) you can use the Point-Biserial Correlation. For other situations, consulting the web-based statistics selection program, Selecting Statistics (See my post of Oct. 29, 2009: how to determine the statistical significance of a correlation.).

Concordance analysis of my nearly 5,000 headers. The first 4,937 headers I wrote for posts on this blog reveal a sensible distribution of frequent words. The ten most commonly used are ”law” (1,569), “departments” (640), “counsel” (584), “department” (573), “firms” (509), “legal” (500), “lawyers” (401), “management” (342), “general” (302), and “in-house” (292). My software, Concordance, says the collection of headers includes 7,352 words (32,347 tokens). Word tells me the file has 50,564 words in it.

Ten more embedded metaposts (See my post of Oct. 25, 2009: Part XLI), each bedraped with the number of its back references.

1. CEO and influence on law department (See my post of Oct. 28, 2009: with 27 references.).

2. Corporate policies (See my post of Nov. 2, 2009: corporate policies regarding the legal department with 12 references and 1 meta.).

Click on the links to read the full post.

No grounds for “moving away from the RFP mentality of too many law departments” (Sept. 9, 2009)

Contrary to some views, RFPs are underutilized as a tool to learn from the market.

The paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould popularized the theory that evolution proceeds from relative dormancy sometimes by leaps and bounds. Punctuated equilibrium, Gould named it, and the idea spread far beyond fossils and Darwin.

Punctuated equilibrium may be an apt metaphor for legal departments. For long periods a department sails along, getting the work done, keeping relationships on an even keel, at a moderate level of pitch and yaw. Then equilibrium is punctured by a huge wave. Dramatic changes occur when:

A new general counsel comes onboard (See my post of Aug. 5, 2007: when to survey clients for satisfaction; Aug. 1, 2006: some consequences of a new GC from outside the company; Dec. 14, 2005: effect of the arrival of a new general counsel on outside counsel; March 7, 2006: more effects on law firms; May 14, 2006: major structural changes at Intuit through new GC; April 16, 2007: reshuffling of power in the department; April 27, 2006: on-boarding a new general counsel; May 25, 2008: expenses of relocation; June 11, 2008: new external general counsel clean house; July 28, 2008: steeple chase for the new top lawyer; April 25, 2009: thoughts on the new GC at Schneider Electric; and July 26, 2009: assessments start forming early.);

Ten more embedded metaposts (See my post of Oct 4, 2009: Part XXXX), each roped to the number of its back references.

1. Appearance, looks (See my post of March 26, 2008: physical appearance with 11 references.).

2. Discounts IV (See my post of Oct. 15, 2009: discounts with 18 references and 3 metaposts.).

To my earlier post about listening techniques (See my post of Oct. 19, 2008: ten sound suggestions.), three more vibrated at me from a recent article in the ACC Docket, Vol. 27, Oct. 2009 at 40.

1. Ask thoughtful questions. The author suggests, “Don’t frame your question in a way that puts the other person on the defensive.”

2. Use appropriate body language. “Appear alert, attentive and friendly. Meet the other person’s gaze but don’t stare.”

Payments to outside counsel expressed as constant currency. “Constant currency” means to state amounts in a currency expressed in relation to its purchasing power in a specified currency. For example, a legal department might calculate its constant dollar spend by applying an annual exchange rate to local currency results for the year. This creates US dollar-denominated expenses which exclude any variances attributable to foreign exchange rate movements.

For example, consider a French company that uses outside counsel extensively in the US. If fees paid increase 10 percent in dollar terms, but the dollar fell 5 percent against the Euro during the year, only a 5 percent increase in external fees will be reported, as a constant currency is applied in the calculation (See my post of Oct 4, 2009: inflation with 8 references; and June 5, 2009: currency conversion with 6 references.).

Complexity refers to decision-making and autonomy. Substantive job complexity depends on the extent to which a job entails autonomy and allows for decision latitude. Complex legal issues are multifaceted and call upon lawyers to combine knowledge from various sources. Instead of thinking so much about the legal problem itself as itself or not, therefore, we should think about the decision making and information combination required to resolve it (See my post of March 13, 2007: complexity with 4 references; and Dec. 27, 2008: complexity of legal practice with 20 references.).

Some readers of this blog might miss posts that I believe are especially stimulating, so I have been compiling each month the ten that hit this criterion (See my post of July 11, 2009: May; July 31, 2009: June; and Sept. 5, 2009: July.). After much deliberation, I selected these ten from the August batch and added a brief summary. Click if you want to read the full post.

1. Push your law firms to budget matters by means of a narrowing fee funnel (Aug. 4, 2009)

As a transaction or case proceeds, insist on tighter budget projections.