Lawyers as contract managers, but not in the law department (FMC Technologies)

Describing his “legal team structure,” at ACCA’s 2001 Annual Meeting, the General Counsel of FMC Technologies (Jeffrey Carr) put up a slide that reads “4 lawyers currently working in non-legal capacities as contract managers will be more closely aligned with legal function.”

Having 7-8 lawyers in the law department at the time, the company had half as many more serving as “contract managers” outside the department (See my posts of March 26, 2005 on second-class citizens.) It is not explained on the slide what Carr had in mind for closer alignment, but obviously the law department and a contracts group should coordinate on complex contracts.