Articles Posted in Thoughts/Observations

For those of you who enjoy unusual words and have read my blog attentively, here is a quiz. Anyone who emails me with three or more correct definitions will get a personalized prize!

1. Ampakines

2. Cogniceuticals

During the past four years, I have collected related posts into what I call “metaposts” (See my post of May 13, 2007: explanation of metaposts.). Starting with the first metapost, published on October 14, 2005, I created 9 in 2005, 15 in 2006, 15 more in 2007, and a whopping 61 so far in 2008. Obviously, the more I write – LawDepartmentManagementblog.com has 3,440 posts as of today – the more often I can accumulate at least five prior references on a topic, and thus make it eligible for metapost treatment. If there are enough references assembled in a metapost, I don’t just cite them I organize them.

The 100 metaposts I have now published since the first on Feb. 3, 2008, each with a hyperlink, cover a grand total of 1,422 references. The median metapost has 10 references; the average, 14; the least number of references in a metapost is 4 while the most populous metapost has 72 references.

Email me if you have an interest in a particular topic more specific than any of my broad 16 categories. If I have a metapost on the topic I will send it to you. Or, your inquiry may spur me to pull together a bespoke metapost.

Send me press releases, to be sure, but only if they tell me something about a law department that uses your service or product.

Of late I have received a handful of press releases from providers of services to law departments. To merely repeat a press release is not to give sufficient value to my readers. I need to know about a more specific use by a law department, a named law department, and perhaps some metrics to make a post worthwhile.

A key driver of client service. “A recent study found that perceptions of the importance of one’s job and its place in the organization’s endeavours had a bigger impact on loyalty and customer service than all other employee factors combined,” Edward Russell-Walling, 50 Management ideas you really need to know (Quercus 2007) at 74 (See my posts of Jan. 10, 2008: employee engagement.). How many general counsel regularly pump up for their staff the importance of what they do for the company?

Losses sustained when a desired lawyer leaves. Turnover, unwanted departures of productive lawyers, incurs costs in recruiting, hiring, and training replacements. These costs, according to MIT Sloan Mgt. Rev., Vol. 49, Summer 2008 at 29, “have been estimated to be 100% to 150% of the salary of a high-performing employee with unique skills” (See my posts of May 25, 2008: relocation costs and 7 references cited; May 14, 2005: estimates by me of over $100,000; and June 15, 2005 regarding the costs of turnover.).

Numbers of secondees expected from panel law firms. Corp. Counsel, June 2008, writes that British “banks have increasingly begun insisting on set numbers of secondees as part of outside law firm panel agreements, with HSBC Holdings plc, for example, estimating that it took on around 50 lawyers for free from its panel firms last year.” For free? And 50 of them?? (See my posts of July 17, 2008: secondees and 12 references cited; and Jan. 23, 2008.).

Here are ten more embedded metaposts with links (See my post of July 20, 2008: Part X.) along with the number of posts cited within them.

1. Benefits perquisites entitlements (See my post of July 26, 2008 – 12 posts.)

2. Contract lawyers (See my post of July 17, 2008 – 12 posts.)

I wrote on July 13th about a conclusion expressed in a headline regarding a recent conference. Based solely on the numbers stated in the post-conference press release, dated June 30, 2008, I questioned whether it was credible to create the headline: “Global Growth Drives Agenda of In-House Lawyers in Top Companies.” Perhaps that headline was editorial license, more to catch the reader’s eye than to be taken literally, but I interpreted it to mean that global legal issues, brought about by the international growth of companies, were a pre-eminent, if not the most important, cause of legal work for law departments of major global corporations.

I drew on data in the press release to speculate. Specifically, I wondered in the post whether, as claimed by the release, the headline is true and whether it could reliably be reported as the views of “top in-house counsel in large global companies.”

Leigh Dance, a consultant who helped with the conference, entitled “Wake Up to the Future: How Corporate Legal Services Must Change”, emailed me shortly after I published my post to tell me that she was “really disappointed” by my commentary. She felt I did not do justice to the conference and did not do sufficient research regarding the data before I blogged. I had not given “the benefit of the doubt to the Association of Corporate Counsel or Eversheds or Metropolitan Corporate Counsel, the three respected organizations that produced the conference and were involved in the polling process.” Dance also sent a note regarding her view to two general counsel whom I know and a third general counsel, all of whom took part in the conference.

Here are ten more embedded metaposts with links (See my post of June 11, 2008: Part IX.). In the parenthesis is the date of original posting along with the number of references cited.

1. Alignment with clients (See my post of June 15, 2008 – 16 posts.)

2. Core team II (See my post of July 17, 2008 – 11 posts and reference to 7 earlier.)

To push your primary law firms to assign a handful of lawyers to handle a large portion of your work impresses me as a sound practice. I refer to those lawyers as the core team (See my posts of Aug.28, 2006: 7 references cited; and May 2, 2007.) and submit that the benefits to the law department are the familiarity of the team members with the company, their dedication to better service because they feel more involved, and the greater value they because of both reasons. I published an article on core teams for matters handled by law firms.

Troubling me, however, is the worry that billable hours by core-team members on your matters expand to fill the available time. In other words, if you are part of a core team on a large matter and you haven’t been assigned to matters, won’t you somehow find a way to reach your quota of billable hours? Won’t you fill your day, every day, with activities that you record in the time and billing system – but does the client obtain commensurate value for those activities?

This fundamental downside of core teams is that in the valleys of work, the billable hours keep piling up. No, this pattern isn’t inevitable, but it is likely. One way to ameliorate this concern is to obtain from the law firm data on what percentage of each core member’s time was billed to you during the month. Lawyers busy on matters of other clients are less susceptible to bill padding (See my post of Oct. 20, 2005: ask for data on total hours billed by key lawyers.).

Surely no sip of the tongue on coffee and cognitive ability. From Fast Co., June 2008 at 39: “A decade-long European study found that men who drink three or more cups a day suffer less mental decline in old age than nondrinkers.” I trust this finding applies to women also. Law departments, fire up your espresso machines for your veterans (See my post of Dec. 19, 2007: grounds for insight.)!

Consolidate through one firm management of overseas IP firms. Tampico Beverages uses one law firm to manage its trademark specialty firms in more than 50 countries. The US-based law firm is responsible for engaging and managing those firms and Tampico receives a single consolidated invoice, according to ACC Docket, Vol. 30, June 2008 at 48 (See my post of Dec. 3, 2006: national coordinating counsel and their benefits.).

Benchmark for patents as a function of R&D spend. An article in the Harv. Bus. Rev., Vol. 85, June 2008 at 132, gives advice to companies that want to repulse patent trolls. The fifth piece of advice is that “Companies must stop flooding patent offices with insignificant inventions.” The authors state that the number of patents per R&D dollar spent is increasing. Sounds like a useful benchmark for law departments (See my post of July 10, 2007: metrics that patent counsel should know.).

A fascinating website, for peculiar people like this blogger who revels in words, is Word Count. Based on a massive archive, the website tells you the frequency with which 86,800 English words have been used in print.

Naturally, I tried out several of the nouns that appear frequently in these posts.

321 Law