Articles Posted in Thoughts/Observations

“Take no man’s word for it.” I subscribe wholeheartedly to the motto of the Royal Society (London) in the enlightened version: “Take no person’s word for it.” As a partisan of empirical evidence in law department management or at least explanations that try to be objective, I look for proof, not anecdote or assertion (See my post of July 20, 2011: the principle of charity.).

No-cost Federal Mediation Conciliation Services. I was told during a consulting project that the FMCS provides free intermediation when impasses develop between unions and employers. The service has professional mediators who are quite good. Who pays for this reduction in legal fees for certain companies (See my post of May 15, 2005: Nat. Labor Relations Board; Aug. 30, 2006: Industrial Relations departments deal with unions; and Dec. 22, 2006: long-serving GC of Steelworker’s union.)?

Calendar year or fiscal year for benchmarks. Benchmark data typically covers calendar years but perhaps it should cover the fiscal year of the participants. That cutoff might make it easier for law departments to assemble the data on spending when their company is not on a calendar fiscal year. I don’t think the data would be distorted by seasonality (See my post of July 8, 2011: seasonal fluxes of invoices.).

Many times on this blog I have compiled lists but I have never sat back and thought about lists. For this post, a list doesn’t simply note elements, such as “the ten articles I wrote in 2010.” Here, I mean the result of someone thinking about a situation and coming up with multiple reasons or candidates or points – a cerebral and creative act, not merely a catalogue of facts. Sometimes a hybrid list involves finding facts and making decisions about them, e.g., “six best apps that help you keep track of your work”).

In the spirit, here are my thoughts on the advantages of lists. Lists:

Push you to think about a topic and explore its contours;

Emic and etic descriptions of law department activities. These are terms used by social scientists to refer to two kinds of descriptions of human behavior. An “emic” account is a description of behavior or a belief in terms meaningful (consciously or unconsciously) to the actor; that is, an emic account comes from a person within the culture. An “etic” account is a description of a behavior or belief by an observer, in terms that can be applied to other cultures; that is, an etic account attempts to be ‘culturally neutral’. The terms were coined in 1954 by linguist Kenneth Pike as a way around philosophic issues about the very nature of objectivity (See my post of Dec. 16, 2005: ethnographers identify patterns in behavior; June 24, 2007: what a cultural anthropologist could glean about law departments; Jan. 8, 2008: how ethnography could help us understand law departments; Nov. 19, 2008: a way to understand practices in law departments; Sept. 30, 2009: a lawyer’s individual office; and April 14, 2011: reading cultural behavior as if it were a text.).

New York joins 43 other states and the District of Columbia in special admission rules for in-house lawyers. According to Met. Corp. Counsel, June 2011 at 63, New York State recently adopted a rule that “allows attorneys who are admitted to practice in other states to serve as in-house counsel to businesses, not-for-profit organizations and other entities in New York, without needing to pass the New York bar exam and without meeting practice requirements otherwise required for admission.” Those out-of-state attorneys who practice in-house in-state have to register and are subject to New York’s professional conduct and disciplinary rules (See my post of May 31, 2005: obligation of legal department to track admission status of its lawyers; Oct. 24, 2005: specter of unauthorized practice of law if not admitted; March 19, 2006: service that checks accuracy of resumes; Dec. 17, 2007: hullabaloo in New Jersey over in-house bar admissions; March 29, 2010: 50-state survey of admission requirements for in-house lawyers; and Jan. 12, 2011: Gucci case and admission to practice of in-house attorneys.).

This blog honored by Corporate Counsel as one of the best blogs for in-house counsel. Recently, CorpCounsel.com reached out to its reporters and @CorpCounsel Twitter followers to ask, “What are the best law blogs for in-house counsel?” As of June 20, 2011, there were ten reported in an article, including this one and GC’s Eye View, In-House Blog, and Reliance on Counsel.

A “Found Money” initiative. One of the law departments that took part in a recent survey recognizes its ”In-house attorneys who have saved or delivered money to the company by going beyond their ‘day jobs’ and leveraged their legal skills sets and knowledge of the company to ‘find’ money that outside lawyers could not.” I find that quote bizarre.

Don’t start your day by checking your emails! A piece in the Harvard Business Review, May 2011 at 85, claims that “Ninety percent of people check their e-mail as soon as they get to work. That turns their agenda over to someone else.” They peek first at e-mail because it seems easy and effective to shoot off some replies and it makes them feel wanted, part of the collective, in the loop. Don’t do it. Decide what you need to do and later check email (See my post of Nov. 6, 2006: e-mail with 6 references; Aug. 26, 2009: 30 e-mail effectiveness tips with 9 references; and Nov. 27, 2010: productivity given huge amount of time on e-mail with 14 references.).

Contract terms and posts on them. Having assembled metaposts of various kinds related to contracts, I had some posts left over. Each of them pertains to the contract terms themselves (See my post of Jan. 21, 2010: 30 contract terms most frequently negotiated; March 16, 2010: nine rules for contract drafting; Sept. 4, 2010: three priority levels for contracts handled by law departments; Nov. 10, 2010: measurement of contract complexity; March 20, 2011: exhaustive contracts and their risks; and March 21, 2011: revenue leakage from contracts.).

For a group of insurance companies, litigation in the past 12 months dropped or held steady

Whether people sue more or sue less when the economy declines ought to be a well-understood empirical fact. Managers of in-house legal teams should be able to plan based on the correlation or lack of correlation to the general economy (See my post of July 19, 2009 #1: expected increase of litigation during recession; and Jan. 14, 2011: patent litigation in decline.). Unfortunately, no such clear-cut picture can be drawn.

Therefore it interested me that a recent report, based on data mostly from large U.S. insurance companies, found that 40 percent of them reported a smaller inventory of litigation in the 12 months preceding October 2010. Another 45 percent reported the same inventory level. The Council on Litigation Management commissioned Revere Advisory to conduct the study of litigation in the United States and this finding is on page 4 of its report. You can request a copy from Taylor Smith.

The January issue of Historically Speaking has several essays on narrative. As historians use the term, it means the larger “story” told by them in their articles, monographs, and books. Different from factual accumulation, causal relation, or measured argument, the narrative power of good historical writing rests on an over-arching image it creates – a compelling tale of good against evil, steady progress or tragic teleology, noble heroes or downtrodden peasants.

The prevailing narrative in writings about law department seem to me to be two, and they conflict. One weaves and assumes a feel-good panorama of progress: spunky law departments rose up in the 1980’s, gained power and prestige through the ‘90s, and have flowered lately into bastions of skill and respected professionalism. Onward and upward!

A second narrative darkens, as it revolves around struggle and tension. Notably the give-and-take of leverage over outside counsel shows up, especially with fractious billing arrangements, or even competition. That is not all; to secure respect from clients and prove the law department’s worth has become an endless effort, one with little prospect of final victory. A narrative of Sisyphean struggle, it stretches ahead.

Not a good mission to “try and do as much legal work as possible in-house” (April 1, 2011)

My conclusion: a bad idea.

Data on matter management systems of large law departments – quite a few with no system or a customized one (April 3, 2011)

Impressive that a number two in a law department jumps to the Court of Appeals. Corporate Counsel online on May 18, 2011, said that the US Senate confirmed Yale University’s number-two GC, Susan Carney, to the U.S. 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals (See my post of May 3, 2007: Chubb lawyer left to clerk for 10 months.).

An inappropriate role for a law department. The general counsel of a textile manufacturing company stated on a survey responded to last Fall by 176 US in-house lawyers that “Our department acts as an audit team constantly reviewing deals for return on investment to maximize EBITA.” A purer example of a law department far off the range, outside its remit and over its head I haven’t read!

15,800 in-house counsel in Spain? This was the message I read on LinkedIn. My translation is in the subject. ¿Somos realmente más de 15.800 abogados de empresa en España? La Abogacía parece ser una profesión solitaria según el artículo públicado en la pag 42 de la revista ABOGADOS, editada por el CGAEdado que el 71% trabaja de forma independiente pero en dicho artículo se menciona que LinkedIn discussion (See my post of Dec. 31, 2010: compiles posts on the number of law departments worldwide.).

At the obvious level, they are right. Every person being unique, every law department, a fortiori, is unique.

That no-argument point accepted, the felt differences have much less consequence when you look at a department in terms of its processes, structure, culture, software, and other attributes. Then the department shares many traits with other law departments, even more so with those in the same industry and size, and the uniqueness shrinks to little. In management terms, each law department certainly has its quirks, which is to be expected, but overall many departments of roughly the same size, let alone industry, face and resolve roughly the same management issues.

The ratio of meeting time to working time (March 10, 2011)

The ratio of meeting to non-meeting time and two suggestions to improve the effectiveness of meetings.

Early findings from 142 in GCM’s 2011 benchmark survey regarding 30+ matter management systems (March 12, 2011)