Articles Posted in Thoughts/Observations

Honored to be on a list of top ten legal blogs. James Dunning, a former UK general counsel, selected Law Department Management for his recent list of top ten legal blogs, calling it “a detailed and frequently updated blog from Rees Morrison for in-house legal teams.”

Twitter and its tracking of mentions on Twitter. Every several days I spend five minutes on Twitter and dash off tweets about writing this blog. It is fun to sit back and say “What have I learned recently about blogging or thought about?” Then, I stumbled upon the Twitter capability that when you click on yourself on the right margin – I am @ReesMorrison and welcome followers, you see mentions of yourself by other Tweeters. I have had 15 and didn’t even know it!

A change in the rate of change – the second derivative. Mathematicians call a slowing down or speeding up of some rate of change a “second derivative.” The first is the rate of change, such as the billing rates of law firms or the number of lawsuits filed against a company. The second derivative is an alteration in the pace of the underlying first rate of change. If a general counsel tracks fluctuations in a benchmark over time, such as total legal spending per lawyer, then even if the absolute amount spent does not drop in a year, the rate of increase might drop: a modest triumph and a derivative to feel proud of (See my post of March 23, 2007: moments in statistics to describe different measures of variance.).

Almost three years ago I pulled together several terms from psychology that are relevant to the operations of legal departments (See my post of July 21, 2006: psychology and several of its concepts, all blended into this post.). Thereafter, repression must have set in and I forgot to update the metapost. Guilty through and through, my ego bruised by the omission, dealing with the neurosis of blog silence, I decided to remedy id.

I would not shrink from citing eight metaposts that bear on psychology.

Cognitive biases and malfunctions (See my post of March 15, 2009: cognitive traps with 21 references.).

A course in law school, “Practicing Law In-House.” Profiled in ACC Docket, Vol. 27, April 2009 at 94, David Benck, general counsel for Hibbett Sports , teaches a course at Samford University’s Cumberland School of Law. His course “teaches aspiring attorneys the details of becoming a practicing member of a corporate legal department” (See my post of Feb. 25, 2009: academics with 16 references.). I would be delighted to hear about similar courses.

A secondment at cost. Corp. Counsel, Vol. 16, April 2009 at 82, mentions that Cardinal Health brought inside a Benesch Friedlander lawyer who worked as a full-time employee in the company’s legal department. Wendy Hufford, Cardinal Health’s chief litigation counsel, said “it was a benefit having him at cost” (See my post of July 17, 2008: secondment with 12 references; and Jan. 23, 2008.). A mid-level associate billed at his or her full cost to the law firm would bill at $100 an hour or thereabouts.

Increase over a decade in minority general counsel. Janet Langford Kelly, Susan Sneider and Kelly Fox, “The Relationship Between the Legal Department and the Corporation,” in Successful Partnering Between Inside and Outside Counsel, (Robert Haig, Ed.) Vol. 1, Chapter 16 at 16-74 points out the progress made in the number of minority general counsel of Fortune 500 companies. In 1997 there were 11 minority general counsel; a decade later there were 39, an increase of 350 percent (See my post of June 17, 2008: diversity with 29 references.).

Having read about Google Trends, I reflexively researched several key terms for this blog. Searchers with Google have had a steady propensity to look during the last several years for “legal department;” searches for “law department” have been tailing off slightly; and those for “general counsel” have held steady. Globally, people searched for “law department” 45 percent of how often they searched for “legal department.” In the United States, the ratio favored “legal department” even more, 3.5 to 1 (See my post of May 24, 2005: difference between “legal department” and “law department”; slightly more hits for “legal department.”). These are searches by website.

As if that weren’t exciting enough, I note that relative to the size of the country, the most common locations of searchers for “legal department” are South Africa (by far), then the US, India and the UK. By comparison, searchers for “law department” came from India (by far), then the US, Ireland and South Africa at about even percentages. The term “general counsel,” to complete these scintillating findings, was searched overwhelmingly by people in the US, followed in roughly equal ratios by Australia, Canada, and the UK.

My usual facility to conjure up fascinating conclusions and insightful comments fails me.

Your humble scribe aspires to no less than a multi-year effort to collect and intelligently comment on as much about management of legal departments as possible. The online corpus, now nearly 4,300 posts, offers visitors much to read and ponder.

What I have labored on besides chronological posts is to create back references, two blooks (on outside counsel management and talent management) and 290 embedded metaposts – collections of six or more posts on a topic.

Metaposts started in October of my first blogging year, 2005, and rose in both frequency and number of back references the next year to 16 with 191 references. In 2007, I created 41 more embedded metaposts with 475 total references, but dwarfed those numbers last year with 156 metaposts totaling 2,650 references. This year, with 63 metaposts and 709 references to date, is on pace with last year.

Language structures the way we think and experience the world; the atom of thinking and expressing is the word, so I have steadfastly defined many of the management words used by general counsel (See my post of Dec. 11, 2006: a rich and precise vocabulary; March 12, 2009: distinctions between terms; March 31, 2009: client vs customer vs business partner; March 29, 2009: primary law firm; and April 8, 2009: regional law firm.).

By my count, with the three posts just cited, this blog offers a total of at least 96 definitions (See my post of Jan. 15, 2009: definitions with 27 references; May 3, 2006: 32 definitions;

Aug. 26, 2006: 10 definitions; Nov. 26, 2006: 13 definitions with 55 references; and Dec. 5, 2007: 11 definitions.).

Here are my latest embedded metaposts (See my post of April 5, 2009: Part XXVIII.), each of which shows the number of references cited within them.

1. Approval authorization of invoices (See my post of April 13, 2009: signing off on bill review with 6 references.).

2. Bayesian statistics (See my post of April 5, 2009: Bayesian statistics with 6 references.)

Morphology. The basic idea is that if you understand the underlying parts of a system (the system’s sub-functions), you will better understand the entire system. Law departments are systems, but it is not clear what are their morphological components (See my post of Sept. 22, 2005: that discipline of systems thinking.).

Value Stream Maps. According to David Silverstein, Philip Samuel, and Neil DeCarlo, The Innovator’s Toolkit: 50+ Techniques for Predictable and Sustainable Organic Growth (Wiley 2009) at 280, process maps are basic flowcharts. “Value Stream Maps” go further as they also “depict the progression of steps, decisions, and handoffs” but additionally “they add a level of sophistication related to time and the identification of value-added versus non-value-added activity” (See my post of Aug. 28, 2005: process maps have lost their way; Jan.10, 2008 #3: maps of document reviews in litigation; Feb. 16, 2008: process maps to explain choices to clients; Nov. 22, 2008: Becton-Dickinson mapped contract processes; Jan. 25, 2009: a map of decision-making processes; and Jan. 25, 2009: process mapping combined with network analysis techniques.).

Takt time for contracts. “Takt time,” states the maximum time allowed to produce a product in order to meet demand. It is derived from the German word Taktzeit which translates to cycle time, with “takt” the German word for the baton of an orchestra conductor. Perhaps law departments should consider how to produce in Takt Time with optimal staffing. More can be found on the website of Strategos.

Steve Taylor spoke with me several weeks ago and the profile he wrote came out in Of Counsel, April 2009, at 14. The six-page tell-all is
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Possibly off interest in a non-tabloid vein are my thoughts at the end about how this blog aspires to leave a legacy of insights and knowledge about law departments. That is my vision, and comments or emails from readers help me move toward it.

In its April Fool’s Day issue, the National Law Journal announced the “20 most influential general counsel in America.” No doubt every one of them is a distinguished lawyer and person. For sure every one of the general counsel on the list has accomplished much and brought honor to his or her organization. Still, I noticed four aspects of the list that made me wonder how the NLJ chose these particular 20.

ACC Leadership Role. Serving in a high position in the Association of Corporate Counsel obviously counted with the nominating group, as witnessed by the inclusion of at least seven general counsel who serve now on the ACC Board or did (35% of the group). These were Clorox’s Laura Stein, Cardinal Health’s Ivan Fong, Cigna’s Carol Ann Petren, DelMonte’s James Potter, Microsoft’s Brad Smith, and Timberland’s Danette Wineberg. Hasbro’s Barry Nagler is a former ACC Chair. And there may be others among the remaining 13 who have served.

Diversity. The twenty general counsel manifest diversity. Nine white males; one Asian-American, four African American men, four white women and two African-American women. As to the gender proportions, nine percent of the Fortune 1000 general counsel are women but 30 percent of this list (See my post of Nov. 17, 2008: notes on women GCs in the Fortune 1000.). I do not know what percentage of the 1,000 Fortune companies have African-American chief counsel, but it is less than the 30 percent who make up this list. Additionally, at least six of the brief bios mention diversity as a particular concern of the person.