Law Department Management: In-House Counsel

Home -> Law Blog Directory -> In-House Counsel Blogs

OR PHONE (866) 635-1838 for Bankruptcy Help, (866) 635-6190 for Divorce,
(866) 635-2689 for Personal Injury or (866) 635-9402 for Criminal Defense

Find a Local Lawyer

Bankruptcy (866) 635-1838
Divorce (866) 635-6190
Personal Injury (866) 635-2689
Criminal Defense (866) 635-9402

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

Two benefits of LPOs sometimes overlooked ? better work remains and technology gets funded

Posted on September 21, 2009
A speaker at the Legal Week Corporate Counsel Forum this past week was from BAT (British American Tobacco). He mentioned two side benefits from using a legal process offshoring vendor. One was that if routine, commodity chores go to the...

Almost a decade ago, some up-to-date cost control measures ? has much changed?

Posted on September 21, 2009
Burrowing through some old files, I stumbled on notes I took at a Fulcrum conference that in May 2000 focused on partnering. Tom Brooks, then the administrator of what was then AT&T?s legal department, spoke about their efforts. My notes...

How an offshore legal service provider can help organize your tangle of contracts

Posted on September 21, 2009
A recent article clearly states how offshoring could help almost any legal department that has responsibility for a large number of contracts. Written by two Mindcrest principles, the article describes how they helped restore order to a large number of...

Good advice about law-student internships

Posted on September 21, 2009
A piece in the ACC Docket, Vol. 27, July/Aug. 2009 at 26, describes internship programs at the law departments of RSM McGladrey and Piper Jaffay. The lessons they have learned include, especially, that you have to plan for the internship,...

To access this complete feed in the blog feed reader login or register for free.

The neuroscience of why stories persuade and teach clients more enduringly than facts and numbers

Posted on September 21, 2009
In-house lawyers should tell their clients more stories if they want to reach them effectively. Stories are the way humans learn best, according to an article in the J. of the Legal Writing Inst., Vol. 15, 2009 at 270. It...

Even in well-trodden bankruptcy, with public data and hearings, the value of lawyers is frustratingly hard to figure out

Posted on September 21, 2009
An article in the Economist, Sept. 12, 2009 at 82, cites projections that the lawyers and others who will be awarded fees in the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers might reap nearly $1 billion, ?well above the $757 million they received...

?Trolls demanding tolls?: thoughts on markets where third parties invest in legal assets

Posted on September 21, 2009
The Economist, Sept. 12, 2009 at 84, explores the emergent field of investments in patent portfolios. Citing Coller Capital, Intellectual Ventures, and Fortress, as active purchasers of patents, the article foresees patent investments as entering the financial mainstream...

Be of good chair! If you can, seat yourself on an ergonomic seat to boost your productivity and health

Posted on September 17, 2009
It had to happen. A post on the humble chair, where in-house attorneys often spend more time than with their loved ones (See my post of July 29, 2007: to goose meetings, do away with chairs; and Feb. 7, 2008:...

Project management software doesn?t necessarily mean the discipline of project management

Posted on September 17, 2009
I use the term ?project management? to mean a set of disciplines for keeping a complicated set of tasks on time and efficiently run (See my post of April 28, 2009: project management skills at SABIC Innovative Plastics; and June...

Let me publicize your law department?s licensing specialized software or if you sold a department a package

Posted on September 17, 2009
This blog can help readers by naming legal departments that have licensed specialized software. If you tell me about those instances, as end-user or as consultant or as software provider, I will periodically summarize the information without attribution...

Two ways to state a trend of less spend on outside counsel, medians and percentages

Posted on September 17, 2009
Serengeti has found consistently that the law departments in its survey have spent relatively more of their total legal spend on the law department rather than on law firms. The data in ACC Docket, Vol. 27, July/Aug. 2009 at 18,...

Historical data about inefficient representations don?t help RFPs provide a useful picture of costs

Posted on September 17, 2009
The question is, how can a general counsel know what a bedrock cost is to handle a set of services? I have advised previously not to tell firms in an RFP what you spent historically, because that will frame their...

The ACC Value Challenge may have been co-opted by the law firms involved

Posted on September 14, 2009
My previous posts about the ACC Value Challenge have presented various facets of it, but not fundamentally challenged its value, so to speak (See my post of Oct. 22, 2008: normal fees for high quality work; Oct. 19, 2008: complaints...

Part XXXIX of a collection of embedded metaposts

Posted on September 13, 2009
Ten more embedded metaposts (See my post of Aug. 27, 2009: Part XXXVIII), each followed with the number of its back references. 1. Billing hyperpost (See my post of Jan. 2, 2009: 8 metaposts.). 2. Contracts(See my post of Sept....

Ten good questions to answer when you take on a secondee from a law firm

Posted on September 13, 2009
These ten questions to answer will help you shape a successful secondment. They come from Mark Prebble, Managing In-House Legal Services: Providing High Value Support for Your Organisation (Thorogood 2009) at 73 . 1. What should the outcome of the...

Email box for members of a legal department to obtain work from clients, or not pick up work??

Posted on September 13, 2009
Here is a bizarre way to get work from clients. As written in Mark Prebble, Managing In-House Legal Services: Providing High Value Support for Your Organisation (Thorogood 2009) at 24, ?Legal departments use a variety of methods to deal with...

Nurture an external network of people you can talk to about management issues

Posted on September 13, 2009
?Selective networking should be a part of the day job, not just a ?nice to do? task.? I commend this idea from Mark Prebble, Managing In-House Legal Services: Providing High Value Support for Your Organisation (Thorogood 2009) at 19. Whether...

A hyperpost on statistics made up of seven metaposts

Posted on September 13, 2009
The scattered distribution of posts here on statistics has reached the point where a hyperpost is in order. The accumulation so far consists of seven metaposts with a total of 84 back references (See my post of April 5, 2009:...

10 free courses to learn more about statistics

Posted on September 13, 2009
Here are 10 totally free courses on statistics you can take on your own time to help you learn, improve and hone your stats knowledge (See my post of Jan. 20, 2007: statistics with 28 references.). Whether you just want...

No grounds for ?moving away from the RFP mentality of too many law departments?

Posted on September 09, 2009
An article in Strategies: J. of Legal Marketing, Vol. 11, Aug. 2009 at 4, offers thoughts by Susan Hackett Hackett@acc.com about the ACC Value Challenge. Along the way she explains that the initiative is trying to move away from the...

One-third splits are predictable when you ask a group of GCs any question about the future

Posted on September 09, 2009
The Intellectual Property Owners Association (in a report issued in May 2009) asked its members about the number of applications for new U.S. patents they foresaw in 2009. Are you surprised that 29 percent thought they would increase, 41 percent...

A doughty, we-can-do-it-ourselves ethos puts quality of legal services provided in doubt

Posted on September 09, 2009
?A legal department which claims a high degree of self-sufficiency and prides itself on doing as much as possible in-house can be a cause for concern? writes Mark Prebble, Managing In-House Legal Services: Providing High Value Support for Your Organisation...

Minimum department size recommended by book is two

Posted on September 09, 2009
Mark Prebble, Managing In-House Legal Services: Providing High Value Support for Your Organisation (Thorogood 2009) at 5, writes that ?My belief is that the minimum size for a viable legal department is two, one of whom may be a good...

Data from Asia-Pacific legal departments about their size distribution

Posted on September 09, 2009
A survey conducted by Asian-Counsel published findings about the size of the ?legal/compliance teams.? Here are the size breakdowns, rounded off: 1 person (7%), 2-5 people (42%), 6-20 people (34%), 21-50 people (10%), and 51 or more (7%). This size...

What controlling costs of outside counsel is NOT

Posted on September 09, 2009
Let?s tap on the shoulder some of the dancers that contend for the honor of the most effective way to lower spending on outside counsel. The winning dancer pirouettes at the end. Sourcing and procurement techniques. No matter how skillfully...

Infrequent problems with external counsel, given by Asia-Pacific survey respondents

Posted on September 09, 2009
Having considered the infrequent reasons why legal departments select firms in Asia, let?s look at the infrequent concerns the same survey respondents expressed about dealing with law firms (See my post of Sept. 9, 2009: long-tail reasons for selecting firms...

Reasons given infrequently in Asia Pacific for why external counsel was selected

Posted on September 09, 2009
A survey conducted by Asian-Counsel e-edition, Vol. 7, July/Aug. at 26, published findings about the factors which most influenced the respondents? choice of outside counsel. Many times I have written about the leading factors (expertise, responsiveness, fees, reputation and the...

Keys to effectiveness: role clarity, division of labor, core competencies, delegation, resources, and processes

Posted on September 09, 2009
Each of these terms deserves lengthy treatment for the reason that they are crucial to the effective management of work in a law department. I think I ran across this list in material from the General Counsel Roundtable, but the...

The posts just keep on rolling about rolling averages

Posted on September 09, 2009
The technique of averaging figures for set periods of time, such as for the previous three months, produces what is called a rolling average. Several posts on this blog have applied that methodology (See my post of Jan. 6, 2006:...

My ten most interesting posts during July 2009

Posted on September 05, 2009
Here are the ten best from July. For each, the bracketed text after the header gives a brief description of the post; click on the post title to read it in its entirety. If you would like all the posts...

Previous | Next

Related Law Bulletins

Insurance Department Issues Second Annual Ohio Medical Liability Closed Claim Report
COLUMBUS — The Ohio Department of Insurance has issued its secon...

Injury Verdict Upheld in Chicago Police Department Auto Accident
A verdict awarded from a personal injury case in Chicago against t...

Department Of State Update on Implementation of E3 Visas for Australians
Our office receives many questions about when the new E-3 visa cat...