Law Department Management Blog
Historical note on the first female GC in the US. The first woman to become a general counsel of a Fortune 500 company was Mary Ann Hynes, appointed by CCH Inc. in 1979. Thank you, Corp. Counsel, Oct. 2010 at 22 (See my post of Nov. 10, 2007: gender differences with 10 references.).
Resolution on “Law” or “Legal” Department. It occurred to me that we call it “law school” not “legal school.” Ergo, “Law Department” not “Legal Department.” The proper term is the compound noun, not the adjective plus noun. What the world commonly does holds little weight to a grammatical purist (See my post of May 24, 2005: difference between “legal department” and “law department”; Oct. 19, 2005 #5: Raytheon sidesteps intractable issue; Jan. 4, 2008 #3: Google Blog Search results; Nov. 1, 2008: BlogPulse references to the two terms; April 20, 2009: Google Trends and numbers of references; and July 7, 2009 #4: Jux2 searches of the terms.).
Dr. Lawyer, Chief of IP. The American Intellectual Property Law Association’s (AIPLA) Rep. of the Ec. Survey 2005, at I-66, includes the unusual fact that 8.6% of the respondent Heads of Corporate IP Departments had earned a doctorate. That is an impressive educational background, not least because they had also graduated law school. Further, one third of them have a master’s degree.
Steady increase in the percentage of minority counsel practicing in corporations.
An article in the Association of Corporate Counsel (ACC) Docket, July/Aug. 2010, at 29, states that “ACC reports that the percentage of minority in-house counsel was 4 percent in 1993, 10 percent in 2000, 12.5 percent in 2001, and 16.5 percent in 2009.” I believe these numbers exclude women, since the article adds two sentences later that “the percentage of minority attorneys overall continues to lag the percentage of the total population that minorities represent.” I wrote the authors for clarification of the source of the ACC findings but have gotten no response.
As a pundit, something upon which I can opun: the glowest form of blogging. Lest blogging become dull, plodding, lawyerlike, I can always pull the pin on a pun. For those who smile at recondite puns, a sample (See my post of May 24, 2010: “hare-racing radical change”; June 2, 2010: “offshore to please”; June 18, 2010: goals, kick and net net; June 23, 2010: “bard pun”; June 23, 2010: horse riding; July 19, 2010: “trenchant shot by Arrow”; and July 26, 2010 #1: a wakeup call on caffeine.).