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“Memory augmentation software” – that caught my eye! A piece in Fortune, Oct. 17, 2011 at 70, describes Evernote, free software that lets a lawyer type notes, add scanned items, save web items, and record voice memos all in an easy-to-use application that helps sort and retrieve. I looked at the website for the company and felt that many lawyers would be grateful for a way to collect stuff about matters they work on all in one place.

Software such as Evernote, which claims 15 million users, can help people keep track of their fragmented work lives. Another offering in the same genre is LiveNote.

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Spot awards not appropriate for lawyers? I heard the view that spot bonuses are not appropriate for lawyers. “It’s not a very professional way to deal with lawyers!” I don’t agree. Since promotions are rare and turnover low, general counsel need some treats in the bag to hand out (See my post of Nov. 8, 2007: on-the-spot awards; and July 28, 2008: hard decisions to award spot bonuses.).

Total amount of spending by law departments. Ken Cutshaw’s column in the ACC Docket, Sept. 2011 at 22, refers to “the $60 billion global legal services market.” I wrote Ken but he has not supplied the backup for that number. kcutshaw@churchs.com Then I read in the brochure for the Litigation Summit and Exposition, to be held Nov. 15-16, 2011 at 9: It is estimated that Fortune 500 Companies spend more than $200 Billion a year on litigation.” No source given and no believability possible (See my post of March 29, 2009: “The US corporate legal services market generates $96B per year in spending.”).

U.S. decisions reported each year. According to Legal Comm. & Rhetoric, Fall 2011 at 100, n. 40, there are “200,000 new American cases reported each year from 600 courts.” Need we say more about the constant development and the likely increasing complexity of the law? Yes, because some decisions clarify, simplify, and resolve areas of law (See my post of Feb. 16, 2006: more than 4,000,000 state and federal decisions.). Even so, the deluge of decisions awes us.

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Here is the latest backgrounder on a leading matter management system’s founder. I asked these “cottage industrialists” to give some idea about the start of the company, some metrics about the current company, and an usual use of their software. Here is Mitratech’s.

“Mitratech started in 1987. When Ladan Behnia moved to the United States, she found it difficult to put her Ph.D. in Artificial Intelligence to use. Picking up her daughter from school one day, she met a classmate’s father – Leon Pizante, a lawyer with big need to automate legal operations. Over dinner with Leon, Ladan mapped out the processes required to successfully manage legal matters. What started as a napkin sketch soon got the attention of leading corporations. Mitratech has evolved into a thriving business that pioneered Web-based software for corporate legal operations management.

Today, Mitratech’s largest implementation allows 2,500 internal and 50,000 external participants to collaborate.

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Rights management software helps companies cope with contract complexity, third party content creators, new distribution platforms, and reporting requirements. According to the website of RSG Median, a provider of this specialized law-related software, “Generally, the process of identifying content and isolating restrictions has been an extremely manual process, one that requires legal departments to sift through paper contracts to identify any possible use limitations. Automated centralized applications serve to maximize the use of cleared content and minimize risk of misuse.”

RSG’s software, called RightsLogic, is a suite of five media industry-specific modules designed to not only simplify tracking contractual rights but also to facilitate the exploitation of those assets. The website says, “Now it is possible to track media assets and their associated financials from acquisition or production to final use. Managers can easily maximize yield, reduce risk, and speed decision-making by streamlining the complex workflow associated with the deal approval process and scheduling.”

I have not seen a demo of the software but I point it out because it is highly specialized, even by industry, and complements or goes beyond generic contract management software

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ACC and Empsight have coordinated for several years on surveys of member law departments. As a company, Empsight focuses on compensation data, at least as summarized by their website: “Empsight International, LLC is a human resource consulting firm which helps employers make better decisions about their investment in people. Our primary focus is on conducting compensation surveys in niche markets, domestically and internationally.” Even so, the survey report appends some staffing and spending metrics.

This year’s CLCM Law survey for large law departments, as it is called, had 186 participants, with average revenue of $25.7 billion and a median of $12.8 billion. Those participating law departments reported 7,481 attorneys and 13,720 total headcount.

Last year that survey had 30 fewer participants (156), with average revenue in excess of $23 billion. A year before that it covered 170 companies (See my post of Nov. 25, 2009: median revenue of $12.9 billion dollars, and 7,748 lawyers out of 13,558 headcount.) while two years before that (in 2007) 205 participated (See my post of Nov. 6, 2007: large department survey reported on 205 companies.).

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As a columnist for InsideCounsel’s online site, I most recently wrote about the different ways law departments account for costs associated with patents. Sometimes the legal budget absorbs some of those amounts, other times it doesn’t – and everything in between. If you would like to read the entire column, please click on this InsideCounsel patent-cost link.

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The larger the footprint of a legal department, the more it needs lawyers who can lead. Local offices need someone who can show the flag, at the high level, and agree to toner purchases at the low level. Different languages and cultures put a strain on distant, senior lawyers at headquarters, let alone time zones, so often the local senior lawyer must pick up the slack.

The more office sites a law department maintains the more opportunities it has to select high-energy leaders. If that is a goal, it’s important to provide some leadership training.

Three years ago I collected 32 blog posts from this blog that covered leadership (See my post of June 11, 2008: leadership with 32 references.).

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As I wrote recently, a leading provider of contract automation software, Business Integrity, invites legal departments to complete a short online survey (See my post of Oct. 18, 2011: three points regarding contract automation.). Here is the URL.

I looked at the survey and noticed particularly one question: “The following are 5 common reasons for automating contract creation and contract management. How important were these issues to your department when considering implementing some form of contract automation?”

The choices given were:

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Remarks on a recent panel by Robert Weber, the General Counsel of IBM, are available on Law.com. In the past, the company mostly hired lawyers with four to eight years of law firm experience. Now IBM increasingly hires straight out of law school.

The decision to hire students from law school came three years ago, according to the summary of Weber’s remarks. “There was nothing wrong with the candidates they were hiring after five, six, or seven years at law firms. But the skills they’d learned as associates didn’t match up very well with their responsibilities at IBM.” The fit wasn’t good. “The company still had to train them for six months before they were really ready to contribute. The freshly minted lawyers they hire now require the same amount of training, but their starting salaries are much lower. And they’re getting IBM training from day one.”

Weber also spoke about turnover. “Retention is a big concern of many large law departments. IBM has had pretty good luck there, too. With more than 500 in-house lawyers, Big Blue loses very few it wishes it didn’t.”

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Gibbons, with 230 attorneys, runs an in-house training and educational platform called Gibbons Academy. All of its productions qualify for CLE credits and an article in the Met. Corp. Counsel, Oct. 2011 at 41, describing it briefly, leaves the impression that legal department lawyers who are clients of the firm can avail themselves of the professional development training. Free CLE through law firms can be both cost-saving and quality enhancing for a department.

It is also worth noting that Gibbons offers clients, at no charge, “kmAlerts System,” which “monitors news, case law, business and legal issues, industries and docket events, delivered via custom reports.” Sounding like the firm has melded tools available for Internet searches and customized newsletter assembly, this creates an additional value for legal departments who can take advantage of it (See my post of May 28, 2010: Pinhawk assembles customized e-newsletters.). As with free CLE, law departments benefit from efforts like this update system from a law firm.