Law Department Management Blog
Poka Yoka and mistake proofing. Poka is Japanese for “inadvertent mistake”. Poka Yoka embraces a group of techniques and an attitude toward quality. The result, aficionados claim, is better product quality and greater participation by workers in efforts to improve your processes, your products, and your company as a whole (See my post of Aug. 27, 2005 on Six Sigma.)
Numbers that cry out to be exposed. One was in a sidebar published in September 2005 by Corporate Counsel and in an advertisement in December from Nextra.
125. “The number of ongoing legal matters in a typical Fortune 500 company, with at least 75 percent of them requiring e-discovery.” I have been unable to locate the source of either metric. The “on-going legal matters” figure especially offends me; for companies of the size indicated, it is bizarrely low. I also suspect that the 75 percent figure is as egregiously high.
Employment practices liability insurance (EPLI). Here is another instance of hedging against spikes in legal fees by having an insurance policy (See my posts of July 20, 2005 on IP litigation insurance, and Nov. 16, 2005 for its availability in Europe; July 30, 2005 on third-party insurance coverage and total legal spending; and May 31, 2005 on insurance where the loser pays the other sides’ fees.). The Insurance Information Institute lists 10 kinds of claims that EPLI coverage can protect against.