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

Secondments to headquarters as a way to integrate foreign-based lawyers

Posted on December 11, 2008
The top lawyer of a global law department ought to think about how to create a one-world department. Shared culture, shared training, and shared experiences knit a geographically dispersed legal team. The general counsel of Synnex, the $7 billion IT....

Self-sufficient in-house counsel who do not have support staff

Posted on December 09, 2008
The seven lawyers who work for Synnex, the $7 billion IT information provider, have one support person. Hence, in the words of Simon Leung, the general counsel, who spoke to 8-K, Vol. 4, Fall 2008 at 12, ?Most of my...

?Contract-services law firms? as a resource (and new term) for managers of law departments

Posted on December 09, 2008
An article in 8-K, Vol. 4, Fall 2008 at 7, describes groups of lawyers that are neither big firms nor boutiques. Reportedly also sometimes called ?semi-virtual firms,? they include GCA Law Partners (Mountain View, CA), FSB Corporate Counsel (Atlanta), Axiom...

Contract lawyers who do litigation review work ? high markups and low productivity

Posted on December 09, 2008
A disturbing piece in the ABA J., Vol. 94, Dec. 2008 at 32, bitterly describes the plight of a contract attorney, immured in a basement, who spends all day reviewing electronic discovery documents. "The buzz around reviews is that the...

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

The world of law department management is also flat

Posted on December 09, 2008
Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank appointed its first general counsel in January, an Olswang partner named Simon Copleston. When he arrived there were three lawyers at the bank who specialized in debt collection work, and oil was pushing $140 a barrel....

Disbanded headquarters group of lawyers and dispersal to business units

Posted on December 09, 2008
A post earlier this month considered the systemic prospect of headquarters staff shrinking in number (See my post of Nov. 30, 2008: HQ legal groups will shrink *1.). In support of that prediction, consider what happened after the merger of...

25 percent reduction in legal department after Akzo Nobel acquired International Chemicals

Posted on December 09, 2008
As stated in Corp. Counsel, Vol. 15, Dec. 2008 at 111, the merger of Akzo Nobel and International Chemicals in early 2008 created a combined legal department of 240 lawyers. Within a few months that number had fallen to 180...

Three responsibility foci: Single Point of Contact, specialists and majors/minors

Posted on December 09, 2008
Let?s define three kinds of foci for inside lawyers: SPOC, specialist, and majors/minors. A Single Point of Contact is a lawyer whom clients in a line of business or staff group can call if they do not know which other...

Benefits of document assembly in the words of a general counsel

Posted on December 09, 2008
A press release from Exari Group announces that Linde, Inc., a member of The Linde Group, has licensed Exari to automate North American sales contracts for three of its business units. Those units use approximately 20 different documents covering the...

Articulate reasons and rank as a better way to evaluate RFP proposals

Posted on December 09, 2008
If you launch a competitive bid process and receive a number of RFPs, push your evaluators to articulate why they favor one firm?s proposal over another. Always ask evaluators to rank and to justify ? it smokes out biases, lazy...

Dogs, furry ones, in law departments

Posted on December 07, 2008
At the American Kennel Club, its law department of three lawyers and two staff attorneys is certainly dog friendly. According to its general counsel, Margaret Poindexter, in Corp. Counsel, Vol. 15, Dec. 2008 at 105, ?Our building is full of...

Generalist lawyers in-house deserve better than to be tarred as ?average?

Posted on December 07, 2008
The general counsel of BAE Systems, Philip Bramwell, is on record that ?his goal is to create a world-class legal department with specialists, rather than generalists.? His disparaging words in Corp. Counsel, Vol. 15, Dec. 2008 at 96, about in-house....

Two spots that blemish SPOCs (single points of contact)

Posted on December 07, 2008
Philip Bramwell, the recently appointed general counsel of BAE Systems, immediately kicked off a three-year plan to reshape the legal department. According to Corp. Counsel, Vol. 15, Dec. 2008 at 96, Bramwell?s overhaul of the 120-lawyer group includes ?making sure...

Rees Morrison?s Morsels #84 ? additions to earlier posts

Posted on December 07, 2008
Discipline in law departments is milder than on British ships of the 18th century. Of the 1,556 sailors on 15 British naval vessels that sailed into the Pacific from 1765 to 1793, 21.5 percent were flogged. Michael Shermer, Science Friction:...

Every lawyerin a law department , even without reports, is a manager in at least five ways

Posted on December 07, 2008
To be a manager need not only mean that people report to you. Indeed, every in-house lawyer is a manager, even if no one reports to that lawyer. 1. The lawyer must still manage her time (See my post of...

Some data on legal holds

Posted on December 07, 2008
Legal holds soak up time of law departments but not much has been published about the practice in the way of benchmarks. Law Tech. News, Vol. 15, Nov. 2008 at 32, offers a few as it summarizes a survey Global...

Observations on another department?s budget categories

Posted on December 07, 2008
Just after having written about one law department?s budget categories (See my post of Sept. 9, 2008: 34 line items.), I came across a second set of accounts. This one has 52 items of which most resemble a category in...

Metrics that would be good if they were available

Posted on December 07, 2008
I have written about benchmarks that the current crop of surveys do not gather. Our industry is missing a number of metrics that could be useful (See my post of May 30, 2005: judgments and settlements; Jan. 19,2008: metrics differentiating...

Contributions by law departments to causes supported by the general counsel

Posted on December 05, 2008
Some general counsel support conferences as sponsors (See my post of Oct. 10, 2008: several named sponsors of diversity conference.). Others support worthy causes with cash. An advertisement in Diversity& the Bar, Vol. 10, Nov./Dec. 2008 at 71, thanks five...

Rate increases by law firms ? a contentious topic

Posted on December 05, 2008
Charge-out rates of law firms inexorably, inevitably and (to some inside lawyers) inequitably rise (See my post of July 30, 2005: nearly 5% increase in rates for partners; Sept. 25, 2006: outside counsel rates average $185 per hour; and Feb....

Evaluations of law firms on diversity as good, adequate, or poor

Posted on December 05, 2008
In 2008, the law department of Waste Management asked every one of its outside firms to produce a two-page plan that assesses its people and their assignments to Waste Management matters. The law department graded every plan as "good," "adequate,"...

?People are more likely to respond [to a survey] when they are disgruntled?

Posted on December 05, 2008
This statement, from Michael Shermer, Science Friction: Where the Known Meets the Unknown (Time Books 2005) at 31, should give those of us who advocate surveys of clients some measure of pause. If systemic factors distort scores downward, general counsel...

Darwin?s Dictum ? ?all observations must be for or against some view if they are to be of any service?

Posted on December 02, 2008
Many of my posts recount a law department practice. I rarely summon any theoretical framework because I cannot perceive for law department management any persuasive theories. No one has unified the field of managing in-house lawyers with fundamental principles that...

Two views of evolution in the management practices of legal departments

Posted on December 02, 2008
Many people think of evolution as a process of nature that leads to the improvement of a species. In a Darwinian struggle to reproduce, a ?better? species comes about over time. Analogously, observers of legal departments may believe that over...

Let?s try a ?fuzzy factor? rating of management practices in law departments

Posted on December 02, 2008
In Chapter 3 of Michael Shermer, Science Friction: Where the Known Meets the Unknown (Time Books 2005) at 38, Shermer considers six ?heresies? that challenge deeply rooted scientific assumptions. He summarizes his discussion of the validity of the unscientific positions...

Seven guidelines for when the legal department ought to be involved in contracts

Posted on December 02, 2008
In-house lawyers who handle contracts and agreements should always be thinking about the right balance between what the legal department does and what clients do. A handful of criteria (plus two) suggest whether the balance of work falls on lawyers.....

International group to foster leadership skills among senior law-department lawyers

Posted on December 02, 2008
According to its website, ?Global Leaders in Law is a forum, which has been established by a group of respected international GCs and former GCs united in the belief that as a group we can effect significant change in the...

What four key benefits does a contract management system provide?

Posted on December 02, 2008
A contract management system can provide four primary benefits: (1) It serves as repository of executed agreements and allows users to search for them. Typically the contacts are stored as PDF files with a summary of their key information (name...

Commentary on intranets of law departments

Posted on November 30, 2008
Many law departments host a site on their company?s intranet and this blog has noted several of them (See my post of March 1, 2007 #2: Honeywell?s legal intranet; June 24, 2007: Cadbury Schweppes? intranet; June 6, 2006: traffic on...

Encryption of data by law departments

Posted on November 30, 2008
If any reader feels like enlightening me on vendors of encryption software that law departments might use, I would be grateful. I mention this because I have been consulting to a company whose legal group encrypts its computers with PointSec....

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...