Motorola’s structure: its law department houses Licensing and Ethics & Compliance

One of the speakers at the SuperConference was from Motorola’s law department. She described the structure of the department, which has two unusual features. Overall, there are four clusters of lawyers dedicated to business units, with regional lawyers reporting up to the heads of them. What is unusual is In the seven practice areas, one of which is Ethics and Compliance. It is the first time I have seen a legal department have an officially named, joint Ethics & Compliance group and the head of it a reports directly to the general counsel. (See my post of Dec. 31, 2006: ethics and compliance reports to general counsel of Raytheon; Dec. 22, 2005: law department relationship to ethics and compliance heads; and April 15, 2007: compliance/ethics officers and reporting lines.).

Also unusual is that one of the Motorola practice areas is Licensing. Unlike in most legal departments the licensing function does not fall under Intellectual Property, a separate practice area at Motorola (See my post of Dec. 31, 2007: intellectual property licensing with 12 references.).