Articles Posted in Thoughts/Observations

Who are the Pavarotti, Carreras and Domingo currently singing the leading roles as law department managers and innovators? Tom Sager of DuPont, Mark Chandler of Cisco, and Jeff Carr of FMC Technologies are center stage and the tenor of their contributions has been projected far and wide.

Between the three of them, their opera (plural of opus) on this blog amounts to nearly 80 posts (See my post of Sept. 25, 2008: Cisco with 30 references; June 7, 2009: E.I. DuPont deNemour with 32 references; and June 7, 2009: Jeff Carr and FMC Technologies with 15 references.).

Strong supporting roles are sung by Brad Smith of Microsoft and Brackett Denniston of General Electric (See my post of June 30, 2006: law departments frequently in the management press.).

For all my readers in Brazil and Portugal, a little background:

Um consultor bem informado para advogados escreve no blog LawDepartmentManagementBlog.com. Há mais de 4,000 arquivos (à partir do primeiro de Fevereiro, 2009) divididos entre 13 categorias.

Há 20 anos que, Rees Morrison, um advogado antigo dos Estados Unidos, tem consultado o concílio geral em como administrar melhor os seus departamentos de direito. Com mais de 275 projetos de consulta, Morrison tem avaliado a operação dos departamentos de direito, tem recomendado métodos de reduzir os seus custos, tem recolhido e analisado dados de ponto de referência, tem coletado as classificações de satisfação dos clientes com os advogados, tem sugerido aperfeiçoamento à estrutura do grupo de advogados, tem avaliado os necessidades de tecnologia dos funcionários principais e dos seus própios advogados, e tem analisado a eficácia das melhores práticas e processos. Alèm disso, Morrison tem trabalhado com vendedores e com firmes de lei para fortificar as suas relações com os seus clientes.

Jeff Carr’s eight-lawyer department at $4.6 billion FMC Technologies punches far above its weight when it comes to innovative and publicized management efforts. Consistently he not only comes up with progressive ideas but also publicize them (See my post of June 30, 2006: law departments often in the news for management initiatives.).

The litany of FMC Technologies’ litigation endeavors is long (See my post of July 21, 2005: website evaluations of law firms; Aug. 21, 2005: don’t hire a head litigator; Oct. 24, 2005: decision tree software; Oct. 24, 2005: disbursements included in rates; Oct. 24, 2005: local counsel costs are part of primary firm’s budget; May 16, 2006: cycle time reduction; Nov. 20, 2006: can’t close matters without a law firm evaluation; Dec. 11, 2007: patent on the ACES system for cost management; April 15, 2009: 6-item form to evaluate law firms; March 5, 2009: 10% and 5% discounts demanded, depending on stage of matter; and May 13, 2009: Litigation Value Challenge.).

Some other FMC posts cover management efforts aside from those affecting law firms (See my post of Jan. 25, 2006: timetable for budget submission; Oct. 26, 2005: contract managers are not in the law department; and Nov. 20, 2006: lawyers dedicated to business units.).

DuPont – big, big legal budget, and big on operational improvements, is the company most written about on this blog. Averaging a bit more than a half dozen posts each year, the ideas, innovation, and ink of Tom Sager’s team have been abundant (See my post of April 2, 2005: litigation metrics; July 16, 2005: data about resolution payments equaling about three-quarters of outside counsel spend; Aug. 27, 2005: large and dedicated IT staff; Sept. 5, 2005: DuPont’s nine-part application when a firm requests rate hikes, and non-equity partners; Oct. 17, 2005: honored for technology prowess; Oct. 10, 2005: offshore drafting of patent applications; and Nov. 24, 2005 #2: not adding staff to deal with Sarbanes-Oxley.).

The next two years kept up the drumbeat (See my post of Feb. 8, 2006: collection efforts; March 15, 2006: savings from early case assessment; April 2, 2006: the Wilmington wave and convergence; June 19, 2006: with GE on contracts; June 30, 2006: the marketing of law departments; Sept. 18, 2006: investment in offshore resources; Sept. 18, 2006: survey regarding minority firms; Dec. 8, 2006: surveys of its 38 Primary Law Firms; Dec. 12, 2006: publicity for its key law firms; Jan. 18, 2007: legal extranet; March 24, 2007: Sager criticizes effects of law firm mergers; June 4, 2007: knowledge manager position; Dec. 10, 2007: recoveries of class action settlements; Dec. 11, 2007: EDGE capabilities; and Dec. 11, 2007: selects Interwoven.).

Nor did the pace slow during 2008 and in the first half of 2009 (See my post of Jan. 30, 2008: asbestos recoveries; Feb. 13, 2008: five-year spend on settlements and judgments; March 1, 2008: metrics such as 7 lawyers per billion; June 6, 2008: total litigation spend as a percent of profits; Sept. 21, 2008 #2: teaming with Wal-Mart on diversity; Dec. 5, 2008: contributions to Minority Corporate Counsel Association; Feb. 7, 2009: laptop security; April 6, 2009: Sager as one of 20 most influential GCs; April 15, 2009: public relations firm; and May 4, 2009 #4: Six Sigma usage.).

Ten more embedded metaposts (See my post of May 22, 2009: Part XXXII), each draped with the number of its back references.

1. Audits of legal departments (See my post of June 4, 2009: internal audits of law departments with 12 references.).

2. Concentration (See my post of May 29, 2009: measures of law-firm use concentration with 9 references and 1 metapost.).

An article in Asian Counsel, Vol. 17, May 2009 at 23, by TranslateMedia’s Rupert Evans offers good advice regarding transation services. Rupert@translatemedia.com

1. Look to see whether a translation agency is a member of the ATA (the American Translators Association) or the ATC (Association of Translation Companies). If they are members, they have been around for a few years and represent that they abide by the code of practice of the association.
2. Look for whether the agency is accredited under ISO: 9001 and the special translation standard BS EN:15038. Those accreditations mean that the agency has been externally audited and demonstrated a satisfactory standard of information management and internal procedures.

Regional patent applications. “With 28,000 cases under management, Canon Europe’s patent department files approximately 200 applications on behalf of Canon Inc every year, in addition to European filings from other group company offices around the world.” Those facts come from IP Rev., Spring 2009 at 37. The next issue, Summer 2009 at 10, adds that of the “top 10 companies by number of registered patents in 2008,” Canon ranked number 3, with 2,114. If patent coverage lasts about 17 years, then 17 times the 2008 registration figure would leave 35,938 cases under management, which is pretty close to the 28,000 number given (See my post of March 25, 2008: patent activities except litigation with 49 references.).

Legal knowledge codifies as an industry ages? “Typically, as an industry ages, tacit knowledge tends to be replaced with codified knowledge.” I have lost the source of that quote, but the idea makes sense. A legal wilderness becomes malls and golf courses. The legal framework that encases the industry settles down, concentration increases as companies grow larger and they figure out how to co-exist, business methods become polished and consistent. All this could lead to reductions in total legal spending as a percentage of revenue (See my post of Aug. 21, 2008: total legal spend as percent of revenue with 9 references and one metapost.).

Helicopter leaders: an apt metaphor for general counsel. A letter to the editor in the Harv. Bus. Rev., Vol. 86, May 2009 at 123, invokes this metaphor: “leaders who [can] rise above the fray to see the big picture and, when necessary, land at any location to drill down into the detail” (See my post of June 11, 2008: leadership with 32 references.).

Dan Hull, on his What About Clients, flattered me today: “At his well-regarded Law Department Management, Rees Morrison, by far one of the smarter, sager and more experienced lawyer-consultants out there, just asked “Does a General Counsel Make All That Much Difference?”

Bitter Lawyer on May 8th goes Hunter Thomsonesq: “Speaking of A Few Good Men—to our ol’ boy from today’s “Bageled” abuse piece—if Rees Morrison would have seen you take a carb wheel and schmear to the noggin, he would’ve called that partner out on his patronizing disparagement and gone “code red” on his ass. Don’t let that approachable smile in his picture fool you, R. “Jessep” Morr’s got guns. You want him on that wall. You need him on that wall.”

Lance Godard wrote on May 4th, “If you don’t have this blog on your RSS feed, add it right now. Why? Because Morrison writes for in-house legal departments, and outside firms can gain a tremendous amount of insight from what he says. This post is a good example. it.

Several posts here have mentioned United Technologies’ legal department (See my post of Dec. 8, 2005: lessons learned from alternative billing; Dec. 19, 2005: difficulty proving savings from discounts; Jan. 6, 2006: captive offshore facility; and Aug. 24, 2006: use of a balanced scorecard.). When I read in Legal Tech. News, May 2009 at 50, that the department has 250 attorneys located in 55 global offices, I marveled at the dispersion (See my post of Sept. 16, 2008: foreign locations of in-house counsel with 11 references.).

The profile of Kim Townsan, its long-serving senior manager of legal administration, also mentions that the department uses a package not mentioned heretofore, ComputerShare Governance Services Global Entity Management System (See my post of Dec. 12, 2007: corporate secretary with 13 references; and Aug. 12, 2008: corporate secretary with 21 references.).

That is the headline of one of the six “don’ts” of working-capital management, as laid out in the Harv. Bus. Rev., Vol. 86, May 2009 at 67. Working capital is not the same as legal spending and staffing, I agree, but the point that follows the quote may still apply to general counsel: “Managers become complacent when their working-capital metrics are in line with industry norms.” The example given is Michael Dell, therefore, looking not at computer industry companies but at retailers.

I think this contention fails. The best benchmarks for legal departments try to match comparable companies by size and industry. Complacency may afflict some general counsel who look fine by the metrics, but others in the company – the CFO, procurement, HR – may take a different view. Besides, a general counsel who decides to take part in a benchmark study most likely cares about the data that comes back.

As for the sometimes-expressed pursuit of data from a “best-in-class” law department, such unicorns are hard to find, and if tagged, will rarely want to spend time with companies that are not similar to them (See my post of May 16, 2007: misguided goals embedded in “world class”; and Aug. 22, 2006: the common overuse of “world class”.).