Well-run law departments aren’t those that avoided the potholes of sputtering departments

Psychologists and sociologists have come to realize that research into functional people or groups doesn’t disclose merely the flip side of dysfunctional people or groups. No more is it true that what you find out about tall people is somehow the inverse, and therefore applicable, to what you can then conclude about short people.

We tend to think that adroitly managed law departments (however that might be decided) have avoided the mistakes of clumsily managed departments (See my post of Feb. 15, 2006 on the ten dumbest management mistakes of general counsel). But the mirror-image error has intruded. The two kinds of law departments may have very different components, drivers, and systems.