Law Department Management

Technology and the Lawyer in the Trenches

I continue to be struck by how little the wealth of technology has penetrated law departments. Sure, everyone uses e-mail and many create their own documents. But as for matter management or extranets or other applications (dictation software, document assembly, graphics in PowerPoint or Excel), there is almost nothing penetrating. And this despite years of preaching about productivity, huge amounts of marketing by vendors, and a rising sense of awareness generally that goes with younger lawyers.

I think the core problem is that, for most in-house lawyers, they know what's on their plate, they don't care much about outside counsel cost control, and words are sufficient (compared to text and other abilities such as hypertext). Stated differently, there is no killer app.

GC Roundtable and Consulting

I have been observing the General Counsel Roundtable, from afar, and wondering how close it is getting to consulting. Recently, a General Counsel showed at a conference a form of self-diagnosis for a law department regarding its use of outside counsel. I admired the work and asked her about its source. She said, "a consulting firm." Afterwards, I learned that the firm was the GC Roundtable. They also provide benchmarking data and interpret it. Over time, with Quick Research and spot surveys, they can offer much that the traditional consulting firms do.

Open cubicles for lawyers

Having recently spent several days with a law department whose lawyers work in open cubicles, I confess to some amazement. From my first day at Weil Gotshal, all through my selling days and the past 16 years of consulting I have had my own office. Not only is there much more room for books and piles, but I have privacy. Yes, these lawyers can dart off to one of the non-reserveable privacy rooms, but that is inconvenient.

The cost is certainly far far less, and this was in London where per square meter costs soar. But I must say it was a shock. Makes you rely much more on email I think, because that is private. Anderson 's legal department in Chicago was also open cubicle.

Offshoring - Some Fire Under all the Smoke

All of this hubbub about offshoring has significance for law departments, despite the hype. A fair number of activities done by inhouse lawyers could be done in low-cost jurisdictions, assuming telecommunications, English, training, and some patience. If there is a US

paralegal, why not an Inian lawyer? If advertising review takes lots of time, why not a first pass in South Africa? if preparing NDAs sucks up time, why not someone in the Philipines doing the first draft. I think there will be major changes on the law firm side and the law department side from this development.

Cost Control -- Procurement Creeping In

Having recently worked on a project where the company's procurement staff became involved, it has struck me that more and more of the procurement mindset will force itself on law departments as they retain outside counsel. Procurement likes process, low cost, electronic retentions (by which I mean auctions), evaluations, consolidation -- all ideas that may be anathema to some law departments. Procurement thinks large-scale and they think small scale, unit costs for example, and these are views that law departments, with their bespoke hiring practices, never consider. The tectonic clash will continue between purchasing agents and lawyers.

"Trends" in law department management

Why is it that journalists fixate on "trends?" I speak with about one every two weeks, and they want to know that some one-off effort, like offshoring, is a trend. To me that term means more and more law departments are following the idea, so how can two examples make a trend? The journalists exaggerate a ground swell when it is really an example of "one swallow does not a Spring make." I am cautious about generalizing on anything regarding law departments.  Perhaps this blog will erode some of my cautiousness.

Groups for GCs to Join

General counsel have a wide range of groups they can join to learn more about law department management.  ACC has the Law Department Management Committee; many Sections of the ABA have a corporate counsel section -- at least Litigation has one that is active and the Corporate Counsel Section.  State bar associations, or at least Pennsylvania and New York and NJ to my knowledge, have counterpart groups.

Then there are the industry groups, like Pharma, CMA, MAPI, FMI and others where I have given talks to groups of lawyers.  Some of the large cities even have law department sub-groups in their lawyer associations.

Beyond these groups for GCs to join, there are the various roundtables, such as the ones run by Steve Nowlan or Bill Zinke.  Laurence Simons runs roundtables in Europe by industry.

I am probably missing some (the International Bar Association just came to mind) but even so there are simply a whole lot of opportunities for GCs to talk with peers about how to manage.