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Diversity & The Bar, Jan./Feb. 2012 at 47, provides data from 390 companies regarding the percentage of men and women lawyers who are direct reports to the general counsel. Those companies had 2,330 direct reports. (By the way, that works out to almost exactly six direct reports per general counsel.) Overall, the gender split among those direct reports was 56% men and 44% women.

The pattern that stuck out for me, however, was that with increasing size of legal departments the percentage of women who were direct reports shrank steadily. For law departments of 2-to-5 total attorneys the split was 41% man to 59% women. With 6-to-10 lawyers the percentages were almost even and that pattern of shifting toward male reports continued up through law departments with more than 75 total attorneys, where the ratio was 68% to 32%.

Approximately 62% of the responding legal department employed 10 or fewer attorneys. Some of this pattern might result from newer and smaller companies having a younger attorney mix. Larger, older companies still have throwback ratios.

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Posted in: Talent
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Of a group of respondents to the ALM Legal Intelligence survey last year, 75 answered a question regarding whether they had “contracted during the last fiscal year with any legal service providers (or vendors) to provide outsourced services.” Of them, 48 said “no” they had not and 23 said “yes.” For those 23 who had contracted for outsourced legal services, 5 of them designated “off-shore” arrangements.

In other words, out of the survey population, less than one out of ten said they had gone off-shore for some legal-related services during the past year. The survey did not ask about the scale of those offshore services obtained nor the kinds of services so we really don’t know much. What we do know, however, is that from a reasonably sized sample of U.S. companies, there was no enormous sucking sound of legal work going offshore.

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An article in Paradigm, Winter 2012 at 24, by Clayton Wire clayton.wire@starrslaw.com lays out five things companies should consider to lessen the likelihood that they will need to resort to a malpractice claim. Companies, he writes, “should never proceed forward with representation by outside counsel without a written fee agreement.” Each agreement would be in addition to an outside counsel guideline. If he means that the law firm states in writing that it will bill by the hour, that’s innocuous; if he means the firm will specify the fee it will charge, that’s ridiculous.

Further, Wire states that fee agreements should ensure “that outside counsel are covered by a sufficient level of professional liability insurance for the matter at hand.” The fee agreement letter provides an additional contractual based claim should there be a malpractice lawsuit. In my experience, inside lawyers who retain a partner don’t give a moment’s thought to the sufficiency of the firm’s insurance coverage and they are highly unlikely to do so.

That’s not all, because “it is imperative that companies investigate and verify security protocols that outside counsel have in place for documents and funds.” Law departments that take the time to do this, or more generally to bullet-proof themselves with an eye to malpractice success have their eye on the wrong ball.

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The NY Times, Feb. 26, 2012, at BU4, wrote about a part of the brain called the Brodmann area 10. “This region of the frontal cortex is believed to be associated with our ability to make inferences about others’ preferences and beliefs based on their actions.” I take that to mean a person’s ability to “read” someone’s behavior and interpret what they value from their actions.

In-house lawyers, because some of them negotiate and because all of them deal with clients and other people, should appreciate the benefits of this aspect of emotional intelligence – the ability to empathize and read other people accurately. As this small item suggests, neuroscientists are moving gradually toward a fuller understanding of what makes us tick. This boringly named cluster of neurons has stimulating importance.

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The most recent report by Profit & Law, Helene Trink’s consultancy in France, covers 119 heads of legal (directeurs juridiques) in France. Approximately 60% of them are in charge of the corporate secretarial function (Secrétariat du Conseil) and a similar percentage lead compliance and ethics (Conformité/Ethique). The least common area shown on one chart was public relations (affaires publiques). These results are roughly in line with what a comparable question would find in the United States.

As for reporting lines, most commonly the general counsel report to the Directeur Général (34%) followed by approximately equal numbers to the head of finance (Directeur Financier), the Secrétaire Général, the Directeur Général Délégué, or the top lawyer of the corporate group. Trink comments (at 5) that there appears to be a trend toward more general counsel reporting to the CEO or President. More commonly, general counsel in the U.S. report to the CEO or the President.

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From time to time this blog mentions where several law departments have banded together to push an initiative. I refer to them as collective actions and praise them. Progress would be made on several management fronts if fellow-traveler departments more often combined their resources.

To be helpful, I wrote an article about collective action by law departments and what some of the foreseeable consequences might be of its spread. You are invited to read my collective action article, published in the National Law Journal or to

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Office locations of in-house lawyers spring up alongside business units and executives. As the latter go global, so will their counselors. One management challenge arises from those foreign locations that this blog has discussed: the absence of attorney-client privilege (See my post of Feb. 16, 2008: attorney-client privilege with 18 references.). If lawyers protected by the privilege unthinkingly write or send something outside the geographic scope of its shield, the company could be harmed.

An article in New England IN-HOUSE, Jan. 2012 at 11, extends the analysis to some countries not previously covered here. The article says that “the majority of EU countries – including France, Austria, Finland, Poland and Germany – appear to have no privilege for communications with in-house counsel.” It adds that “Brazil is reported to recognize a strong form of attorney-client privilege … while in Russia there seems to be no privilege for in-house counsel.” Commentators are unsure about the privilege in India and “there appears to be no attorney-client privilege in China.” The language betrays unknowns and uncertainties, but that is part of the problem with the privilege.

Since my first metapost on the privilege, another baker’s dozen have appeared (See my post of Feb. 23, 2008: steps to protect attorney-client privilege for in-house litigators; Sept. 9, 2008: an intractable tension between giving business and legal advice; Feb. 13, 2009: technology may put privilege at risk; May 10, 2009: audits in a country by a law department seeking legal problems; Feb. 9, 2010 #1: possible change in France; March 9, 2010 #4: use outside counsel for internal investigations; March 22, 2010: argument to separate claims work from legal work; Dec. 16, 2010: e-mail practices and attorney-client privilege; June 17, 2010: equivocal comments about in-house lawyers in India and the privilege; Jan. 12, 2011: Gucci’s loss of privilege since GC was not admitted to practice law; April 25, 2011 #1: explanation of Akzo Nobel decision; Dec. 22, 2011 #4: litigation funding and loss of privilege; and Dec. 31, 2011: dual roles as GC and head of compliance raise privilege tensions.).

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A recent announcement described a capability that I hadn’t heard about. Handshake Software, a provider of SharePoint-based intranets, extranets, search, document and mail management, and Vizit, a provider of content visualization and social collaboration software for SharePoint, announced a technology alliance. It was what Vizit brings to the alliance that impressed me.

Some readers may not realize that software can enrich contracts and agreements with messages related to them on e-mail, intranets, blogs, wikis, instant messaging, and other “conversations.” In terms of knowledge management tools, the ability to see the document on your monitor and next to it the material from multiple conversations could be very powerful. Here’s how the press release reads:

“Vizit makes content easier to find, navigate, and utilize with its powerful visualization technology. Vizit adds Social Footnotes™ and document conversations to SharePoint 2010’s collaborative suite. … Vizit keeps social conversations in context by presenting them alongside supporting material.”

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What makes estimations of return on investment intractable is the inherent reliance on unreliable assumptions. All ROI “calculations” depend on givens: “Lawyers spend at least 10 minutes a day looking for documents,” “Paralegals costs us about $25 an hour,” “We prepare more than 30 placement agreements a quarter,” or “Approximately 8 percent of all disbursements charged us exceed our guidelines.” If managers don’t know a number, they estimate or guess it, a risky step.

The assumptions in ROI forumulas rest on presumed facts that are to varying degrees carefully and objectively obtained. In the end the concatenation of assumptions leads to a saving or an improvement in output. Similarly, the input – the investment – harbors some grabbed-from-the-air figures. All ROI estimates, therefore, depend on the assumptions people build into them, which naturally gives opportunity to slant the resulting division of outcome divided by input. And we haven’t even mentioned holding all other factors constant that might influence the results.

Quantifying risks avoided stumbles like calculating ROI: both are exercises based crucially on assumptions, and everything revolves around those key projections or approximations. “Hiring this firm at these rates will avoid a second class action,” “Reducing the number of discrimination complaints by 10% is certain,” “Among these patents are at least two with 7-figure revenue.”

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