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This sentence from 2008 regarding Australia startled me. “Of the estimated 50,000 lawyers currently in practice throughout Australia, around a quarter are employed in-house.” One out of four? That seemingly high ratio comes from Benny Tabalujan, ed. Leadership and Management Challenges of In-House Legal Counsel (LexisNexis Australia 2008) at 3.

In the United States, estimates of the ratio of in-house corporate lawyers to private-practice lawyers run around one to sixteen (approximately 70,000 to 1.2 million). I am not familiar with any estimates of Federal, State, and local government lawyers. On reflection, however, legal staffs are enormous in the myriad federal agencies; then add even more for state counterparts; toss in thousands who are in prosecutor’s offices and local government and perhaps one quarter of the lawyers in practice being internal is not so far-fetched.

And, since you asked, if Australia averages about three lawyers per law department, does the sentence suggest something like 4,000 law departments in the land of ‘roos (1/4 of 50,000 divided by 3)?

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Proving yet again that in-house lawyers around the world share similar sources of job satisfaction, consider the survey results cited in Benny Tabalujan, ed. Leadership and Management Challenges of In-House Legal Counsel (LexisNexis Australia 2008) at 51. Conducted in 2005 by the Institute for Knowledge Development (IKD), the survey data from the unpublished report shows that when asked “What do you enjoy most about your role?” 85 percent of the in-house respondents checked “being part of the business” and “variety and diversity of the role.”

Other surveys or posts have revealed similar attractions of in-house practice (See my post of April 13, 2006: nine advantages for corporate practice; May 3, 2010: nine attractions of an in-house position; and July 26, 2008: benefits provide most attraction.).

In the Australian survey, the grumbles come from “Administrative tasks,” bemoaned by 68 percent of the respondents and “People management” by 55 percent. Other problems have shown up on this blog. In fact, for some unknown reason, this blog has dwelled more on the downsides of inside practice than sided with the upsides (See my post of March 28, 2006: reasons not to go in-house; April 12, 2006: among least rewarding aspect of practicing in corporation is “career advancement opportunities”; April 13, 2006: advantages of working in-house: “career advancement” rated low; May 10, 2006: hours not necessarily shorter; June 24, 2007: the intractable problem of career paths; Jan. 16, 2009: disadvantages include stress; and Jan. 16, 2009: lack of pro bono opportunities.).

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An update on Bloomberg Law, whose second incarnation has recently been rolled out, appears in Law Technology News, Oct. 2011 at 44. Quite different than the complicated pricing of its main competitors, Bloomberg Law charges $450 per month per user for unlimited access.

The steady change in how online research costs are regarded by internal lawyers keeps pace. They do not want to pay for them so fixed fees fit with the zeitgeist (See my post of Sept. 13, 2005: disbursement costs of online research; Sept. 27, 2005: survey data on research spend; Sept. 31, 2005: CaseMaker; Jan. 16, 2006: providers of research services; Dec. 19, 2006: do not pay online legal research costs; July 16, 2007: legal research cottage industry; and Aug. 15, 2008: keep a close eye on legal research requiring more than 10 hours on any one issue.).

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Law Technology News, Oct. 2011 at 38, recounts a painful story of a large pharmaceutical company that needed to track and allocate legal costs to business units, products, or cost centers. Also, according to the author, Kenneth Jones of Xerdict Group, the general counsel’s office needed to break out legal costs by different types of litigation or transactional work.

Their solution? Add special codes for invoices processed through the corporate financial system in the invoice payment module. The codes can go more than one level and they allow the reporting of spend by the different reporting categories needed. Much training and testing was called for.

My question: why did this law department go through all the agitation to jerry-rig something in accounts payable rather than license its own matter management system? Why customize and contort the enterprise-wide accounts payable system to satisfy the legal department’s peculiar need when store-bought solutions are at hand? Perhaps the consultants or internal IT had their own agendas?

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Law Technology News, Oct. 2011 at 19, says that “SAP and Tata Consulting Services now have an iPad application for their jointly developed Legal Management System.”

That pregnant sentence tells us at least four possible developments (1) SAP, one of the giants in ERP systems, has put its toe in the waters of matter management (See my post of Feb. 24, 2011: Hyperion prediction that major software companies will enter the legal department market.). (2) A powerhouse global consulting group has pushed further into law department automation (See my post of July 27, 2011: entrance to in-house technology market of global behemoths.). (3) Apps specifically for in-house counsel have appeared (See my post of Sept. 26, 2011: mobile apps.). (4) Tablet computers, prominently iPads, will become preferred hardware for in-house lawyers, even if not fully supported by corporate IT (See my post of Nov. 22, 2010: bring your own personal software to work.).

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One of the general counsel interviewed by Law Technology News, Oct. 2011 at 18, praised videoconferencing with outside counsel. Glenn Weinstein of iRobot uses hardware and software from Logitech Vid and is “encouraging all of our outside counsel to get on the system.”

It sounds like this capability operates from conference rooms but it could also mean from individual offices. I refer to the former as teleconferencing and the latter as individual video-cams or webcams (See my post of Feb. 15, 2010: brief comment on not having seen these in law departments.), but that may be an idiosyncratic definition (See my post of June 8, 2011: videoconference with 7 references.). Either way, Weinstein’s experience and expectations will certainly become more common among in-house counsel.

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For more consistency, have the administrator oversee evaluations of non-lawyers. When paralegals and support staff report to the administrator of a legal department, with input from the lawyer leading the team they support, the greatest benefit is consistency in performance objectives and measurement. The head of operations can calibrate across roles and compensation bands to bring more balance and internal equity to the evaluations (See my post of March 26, 2005: risk that non-lawyers reporting to lawyers become second-class citizens.).

There can be no such thing as an ultimate explanation. David Deutsch, The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations that Transform the World (Viking 2011) at 64, makes that claim because the resolution of any problem makes us aware of deeper problems. If a general counsel believes that competition drives most people’s fundamental behavior – that they strive to advance relative to others – that cannot serve as an ultimate explanation. What explains competition and why not another foundational driver? This notion relates to mental models (See my post of Sept. 10, 2005: mental models and decisions; and June 6, 2006: mental models are closer to theories.).

Australian Corporate Counsel Association predates ACC by two decades. Benny Tabalujan, ed. Leadership and Management Challenges of In-House Legal Counsel (LexisNexis Australia 2008) at 8, points out that “With its origins in the 1960’s, ACLA was one of the first fully dedicated in-house lawyer member organisations established” (See my post of Oct. 5, 2009: ACC’s predecessor formed in 1981.).

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The Canadian Corporate Counsel Association (CCCA) published in its Autumn issue an article about measuring the value of a law department. It describes the considerable efforts of a large Canadian power company to depict what its legal team accomplishes. This blogger has some trenchant quotes in the article, to be sure, but the pièce de résistance is a photograph. There’s nothing like 200 shots taken by a professional to give one that casual, astute look.

The article makes for a good read and you can click here to enjoy some thoughts on value delivered and quantified.

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Most associations of law firms boast about their size and international reach. The likes of TerraLex, LexMundi, Primerus and others believe that global coverage matters to clients. Other networks stress their regional expertise and footprint.

Still other networks of firms orient themselves around specialized areas of law. There are groups for employment law (See my post of March 11, 2010: Ius Laboris.) as well as for intellectual property law (See my post of April 10, 2006 # 4: Association of Patent Law Firms.) and litigation (See my post of April 15, 2011: The Network of Trial Law Firms.). It seems logical that there would be such groups, which share research, referrals, and marketing, in more areas of law, such as environmental or import/export and customs or perhaps immigration. I welcome hearing about them since I have probably simply not run across mention of them.