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In-House Counsel

Law Department Management

Comments on every aspect of how best to manage a law department, including how to manage outside counsel. Topics of interest to general counsel and other in-house lawyers who manage legal functions.
By Rees Morrison

Post Frequency: 39.5/day

Last Entry: April 01, 2011 at 11:12:47

To set you thinking: guidelines for the number of core staff scaled to fees projected on a matter

Posted on September 27, 2009
It is sound management for a legal department to insist that its primary firms designate a core group of lawyers who will bill most of the fees on a matter. That core-staff notion has ample intuitive appeal. What?s needed are...

Most-favored nation status should apply, if at all, only on a fee volume basis

Posted on September 27, 2009
It is arguable that law departments deserve discount levels like those granted to other clients of a firm where the discount is based solely on the volume of fees paid in a year. If your law department spends $2 million...

The cascade from corporate goals down to individual lawyer objectives

Posted on September 27, 2009
This is high-level stuff, but it helps to put several pieces and terms in place. Start with an image of an upside-down pyramid where the top level is your corporation?s goals. To further those corporate goals ? why the legal...

Goldilocks in-boxes -- legal work that balances challenges and churns

Posted on September 27, 2009
A recent study found "There was a 50/50 split between those [law departments] choosing to retain the volume-based work and those choosing to send out the volume work and retain the more complex work in-house," reports Legal Strat. Rev., Summer...

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Burbling rocks and water sounds inspire poetic reveries

Posted on September 27, 2009
A few offices nestled in law departments ooze the serene contemplativeness of a Japanese rock garden: calm, ordered, soothingly lit, an oasis in chaos. As you relax, you notice it isn?t incense burning, or the Monet poster, or even the...

My article on the esoterica of power-law distributions (exponential indices, anyone?)

Posted on September 27, 2009
Power-law distributions rarely crop up in lunchrooms and hallways. Lawyers often feel uncomfortable with mathematics, let alone something as esoteric as a function with an exponent. But reluctance and distaste does not change the fact that a number of occurrences...

The kinds of mistakes that get you fired, and the mistakes that legal departments accept

Posted on September 27, 2009
According to Christine Baker, inside counsel with Realogy Corporation , ?Mistakes will not get [a law firm] fired. But lying about your mistakes or trying to shift blame will. Either act will destroy the relationship?the first immediately, the second gradually...

?Broken deal? fee reductions for transactions that don?t get done

Posted on September 27, 2009
Some law departments negotiate fee arrangements with law firms whereby the department (a) pays upon the successful completion of the transaction and (b) pays a substantially reduced amount if the transaction does not go through. Commonly done with major acquisitions...

Various ways to handle discounts given by law firms

Posted on September 27, 2009
Close to 40 posts on this blog have to do with discounts granted by law firms (See my post of Nov. 26, 2006: discounts with 15 references; Jan. 21, 2008: 10 more posts with variations on discounts; and Dec. 26,...

Posts on creativity since my last accumulation

Posted on September 26, 2009
It has been a long time since I assembled the posts on this blog about creativity (See my post of Oct. 29, 2006: creativity with 11 references.). The topic is too important for comments about it to lie dispersed and...

The status ?Of Counsel? has no significance for lawyers in legal departments who manage outside counsel

Posted on September 26, 2009
For law firms, the ?Of Counsel? designation makes a difference, even though it can signify several different circumstances of the particular lawyer. For in-house lawyers, the differences are meaningless. Of Counsel lawyers might not make capital contributions, but in-house counsel...

Would an all-star legal department result in lower total legal spending as a percentage of revenue?

Posted on September 26, 2009
If effective management all comes down to people, why wouldn?t a legal department staffed only with Harvard Law Review editors not drive total legal spending as low as possible? They would think rings around other in-house groups in negotiations and....

Total legal spending as a percentage of revenues has remained relatively constant over past five years

Posted on September 26, 2009
Total legal spending as a percentage of revenue (TLS/Rev) leads the metrics pack in terms of importance (See my post of Dec. 5, 2007: stability of the ratio over a decade; and Jan. 12, 2009: benchmarks over time with 8...

Differences between benchmark comparisons on industry, revenue, and number of lawyers

Posted on September 26, 2009
A recent post describes a multi-column chart that color codes a law department?s metrics against key benchmarks (See my post of Sept. 22, 2009: three comparisons on nine benchmarks.). It reminded me that I have long felt the most meaningful...

Management decisions rest on social values of the manager

Posted on September 23, 2009
?Any technique of social control, however, involves human interests and the exercise of power over men. This means that any suggestion of a method for the solution of a social problem is shot through with normative implications.? Found in a...

On my bucket list, ten metrics about outside counsel spend I hope I learn eventually

Posted on September 23, 2009
Connoisseur of benchmarks that I am, I?m drawn to what we don?t know (See my post of Dec. 7, 2008: four missing metrics and my article; and May 20, 2009: time spent by in-house lawyers that is non chargeable is...

Actions a general counsel can take once she spots a block of commodity services

Posted on September 23, 2009
Estimates have put the percentage of commodity work handled by legal departments as high as a third of all they do. Whatever the proportion, where general counsel identify blocks of relatively routine work, they can choose from a set of...

Unbelievable! Legal departments don?t expect action from law firms, just ?open discussions?

Posted on September 22, 2009
An article by the president of BTI Consulting, published in Strategies, Vol. 11, Sept. 2009 at 6, lists as one of ?five new client priorities law firms can leverage to build business? a notion very strange to me and my...

An operating guide for support staff in a law department, perhaps

Posted on September 22, 2009
Mark Prebble, Managing In-House Legal Services: Providing High Value Support for Your Organisation (Thorogood 2009) at 49, discusses support staff and both gives and takes advice: ?Without getting bureaucratic it is worth developing an operating guide for support staff, which...

Beware folks who are dim bulbs, unaware volts are dimmed bulbs

Posted on September 22, 2009
According to the US Department of Energy, cited in an ad from Fortune, Vol. 160, Sept. 28, 2009 at 55, ?lighting is by far the largest user of electricity in commercial buildings. It consumes 38% of the total ? more...

Rees Morrison?s Morsels #120 ? additions to earlier posts and short takes

Posted on September 22, 2009
For headcount calculations, sometimes a ?lawyer? isn?t a ?lawyer.? Discussing a consolidated legal department, a sidebar in Mark Prebble, Managing In-House Legal Services: Providing High Value Support for Your Organisation (Thorogood 2009) at 41, mentioned how hard it was to...

A clever chart that shows your department on three comparisons as to nine benchmarks

Posted on September 22, 2009
During a recent consultation, I reviewed a chart that covered metrics for nine basic benchmarks. The chart had five columns, the first being the metric, such as outside legal spending per lawyer. The next column was 1st quartile, then 2nd...

Clients are from Pluto, lawyers from Mercury ? huge personality differences mean change is due

Posted on September 22, 2009
Peter Kurer, the former chairman of UBS and before that its general counsel, spoke at the Legal Week Corporate Counsel Forum last week. One portion of his remarks sketched a typology of behavioral and psychological differences between business people and...

Quite a project for me to manage my posts on project management

Posted on September 22, 2009
Project management skills come into play with project teams (See my post of Feb. 1, 2009: project teams of law departments with 39 references and 4 metaposts.). I have written about project management generally in legal departments (See my post...

Assertion that average legal department cut nearly 17 percent of their law firms in 2009

Posted on September 22, 2009
An article by the president of BTI Consulting, published in Strategies, Vol. 11, Sept. 2009 at 6, asserts that ?the average company cut nine law firms ? nearly 17 percent ? from its current roster of legal service providers in...

Ten alternatives to executive search firms to recruit lawyers for your department

Posted on September 22, 2009
Headhunters account for only a small portion of all the law positions filled for legal departments, the most senior ones at that (See my post of Sept. 16, 2008: search firms with 12 references,including estimates of 10-15% of positions.). For...

Eight reasons why partners might not offer good ideas for how legal departments can improve

Posted on September 21, 2009
Even if solicited by a general counsel to offer candid feedback, for many reasons a relationship partner might only reluctantly and partially comment on the performance of a law department client. At least eight obstacles conspire two thwart useful observations,...

Insights into the HSBC offshoring to Malaysia of branch support

Posted on September 21, 2009
Richard Hennity, a senior lawyer from HSBC, spoke at the Legal Week Corporate Counsel Forum last week. HSBC, with 850 lawyers and 1350 legal staff, has for three years run a six-lawyer offshore program in Malaysia (See my post of...

More details on the Rio Tinto offshoring deal with CPA Global

Posted on September 21, 2009
Leah Cooper, the global managing attorney for Rio Tinto, spoke at the Legal Week Corporate Counsel Forum last week. Her remarks added nuance to what I have written previously about the company and its ground-breaking arrangement with CPA Global (See....

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