The Project for Attorney Retention (PAR), an initiative of the Program of Worklife Law at American University’s Washington College of Law, published a lengthy report in December 2003 (10 Wm. & Mary J. of Women & L. 367 (Spring 2004)). The authors wrote that “the vast majority of attorneys reported that full-time attorneys at their corporations are generally in their offices between forty-five and fifty hours most weeks.” (pg. 390)

If we take the mid-range (47.5 hours a week) and subtract the four weeks for vacation and two weeks for holidays and another week of absence for sickness or other reasons, that leaves 45 weeks at 47.5 hours per week, or 2,138 office hours per year. Some of that time would not count as chargeable to clients, such as time spent recruiting, or being evaluated, or during continuing legal education. Perhaps one out of ten hours would not be chargeable if the attorney were in a law firm? If we subtract 10 percent (214 hours) from the 2,138 estimated above, that leaves 1,923 hours.

Surveys and benchmarking studies have for years used 1,850 chargeable hours a year for purposes of calculating the fully-loaded cost of lawyers per chargeable hour. For my money, that rule of thumb stands the challenge of the somewhat higher figure deducible as above from the PAR report.

In late 2003, the Arizona Attorney published a roundtable discussion among six senior corporate lawyers (40 AZ Attorney 12 (Nov. 2003)). Asked whether he had ever fired outside counsel, the General Counsel of Dial Corporation said “yes” and explained. “The times we have faced a problem is when we have someone too low a level working on our case. And you feel like you’re not getting enough bang for your buck, so to speak, and then things aren’t moving along quickly enough.”

Like many issues of law department management, the golden mean holds true. Law departments do not want too much partner time; they don’t want too much junior associate time. They want Goldilocks, Esq. time, with judgment, experience, and a modest billing rate.

A previous post wrote about competency maps used by Altria’s Asian law department (CounseltoCounsel, May 2005 at pg. 11). The group developed a skills and competency profile (sometimes called a “competency map”) for each lawyer position. The profile captured the needed skills in four categories and ranked the competency level the incumbent needed in each for the position.

Pitney Bowes has thrown out the old competency models and exchanged them for “High Impact Learning Maps.” Is that just a new term for the same old thing? Definitely not, according to Dave Basarab, Director of Employee Development at Pitney Bowes, who is to speak at a conference [Sharing @ LearnShare, Atlanta, Georgia, Oct. 13-14, 2005 at Emory University].

According to the brochure, this talent development tool provides:

• Significant increases in productivity
• Learner intentionality (that clotted phrase will pack the auditorium!)
• A line of sight to performance results (jargon, what jargon?)

I do not mean to be flip simply because of word choice, as this evolution beyond competency maps may offer profound benefits.

A global bank convened all of its lawyers in Frankfurt, Germany. The second night, we took buses to Ronnerberg Castle, a 14th century restored fortress. Inside the guest hall of the 600-year old castle we ate dinner. But we didn’t just dine. The Rohnerberg staff recreated a royal meal from the early years of the castle, complete with one eating spoon, thick-honeyed mead, crude wood bowls, honey in pots, chunks of coarse bread, cold stone floors, and no salt. Courtiers dressed in 14th century garb sang lyrics accompanied by lutes. All we missed were dogs scrapping for bones and wise jesters.

A leading beverage company invited its lawyers and paralegals to Gleneagles, an internationally acclaimed golf resort amid the heath outside Glasgow. The highlight for me, aside from the scotch tasting and the traditional Scottish fare (got Haggis, anyone?), was a session with an English long bow. Maybe it’s a male thing, but slapping on a leather arm protector, thunking an arrow with a 100 pound pull completely through a target makes Agincourt come alive. For more of my personal retreat highlights, see my recent article in Legal Times.

I am serious about this question, even after 18 years of doing nothing but trying to understand how to improve law departments. And Professor Jay Forrester, the world-famous emeritus professor at MIT who has studied complex systems for 40 years, offers an explanation why. “most social organizations … represent a far higher level of complexity and abstraction than most people can grasp on their own.” (40 Strategy + business, Fall 2005 at pg. 80, an interview of Forrester). Leaders who persist in making management decisions based on mental models – instinctive theories they have about the way their organization works – are “decidedly inferior to policies and strategies based on computer models of ‘system dynamics – the interplay of complex, inter-related forces over time.”

I have repeatedly bumped into difficulties assigning my posts to categories. Most posts could fall under more than one category; most of the categories overlap with other categories (for example, “productivity” could subsume everything and “talent management” could cover everything to do with people, which is everything). No taxonomy of concepts adequately and exclusively encompasses the manifold complexity of even the smallest law department’s operations.

Colin McGinn, a professor of philosophy at Rutgers, has concluded that humans have made little progress for millennia in solving the basic issues of philosophy because our mental capabilities are not up to the task. It’s not shameful to realize that a problem over-matches our abilities; it is embarrassing to claim falsely that we know the solution; and it cowardly to give up.

We take refuge in simplification (“It’s all about the people.”); we seize upon a comforting linchpin (“Technology will raise productivity.”); we ignore forces that we devalue or overlook (“Support staff are fungible and of no consequence.”)

Depressing, yes, but perhaps we are too early in the pursuit to even contemplate catching the full understanding of law departments.

A piece in the National Law Journal (Sept. 5, 2005 at pg. 11) said that “about two years ago [Wal-Mart] had 50 law lawyers,” based on remarks at a conference by the company’s general counsel. The journalist added that in 2004 the department hired 39 lawyers. Even if the baseline in about 2002 were somewhat higher than 50, the growth in 2004 astonishes me (about 78 percent growth from the baseline figure).

I think mergers did not account for the hiring binge, and maybe Wal-Mart a couple of years ago was legally anorexic. My hunch is that the company has tried to stem its enormous outside counsel bills by in-sourcing in-house counsel (See my post of September 22, 2005 stating Wal-Mart’s external spend of $200 million.)

A piece in the National Law Journal (Sept. 5, 2005 at pg. 11) cited remarks by the GC of Walmart, Thomas Mars. Mars said that 82 of the relationship partners at the company’s top 100 firms are white men. Doesn’t that mean that 18 percent of the retailer’s top 100 firms are minorities (either not men or not white)?

Further, the 82 firms “get $142 million of the $200 million that Wal-Mart spends each year on outside counsel” so some undisclosed portion of $58 million goes to the firms with minority relationship partners. Feels like the minority glass is far from empty.

And, I wonder, isn’t it more important to have a plenitude of minority lawyers and paralegals working on the company’s legal matters, without regard to the protected status of the relationship partner?

Really Simple Syndication (RSS), which notify blogophiles about new posts to their favorite blogs, could allow law departments, I suspect, to know immediately whenever a law firm timekeeper enters time to one of the law departments’ matters.

That a law department would want to have such up-to-the-second raw data, I doubt. Perhaps something meatier, like a weekly or fortnightly total of time, or data that compares the actual time to the budget, would be palatable. Another possible use of RSS feeds would be on a major document discovery effort; where the feed could tell how many documents were processed. More generally, RSS could transform law department management where there is any kind of information that needs to be rapidly updated.

Although all companies have trademarks and nearly all have domain names, patents sit in the first chair. Patents conjure up genius inventors, market creating ideas brought to commercial triumph, super-sized litigation fees, seven figure annual maintenance fees, and whopping infringement damages. Patents are steroids; trademarks are body lotions.

Trademarks, even in global brand companies with tens of thousands of registered marks in 200 plus jurisdictions, just get no respect®.

Does this sound right (from a recent mailing of Lexmark a document management system vendor)?

“Although the typical paper document gets copied 19 times, up to 7.5 percent of all documents are lost and 3 percent of the remainder are misfiled.” The Lexmark promotional material cites its source as “Coopers & Lybrand.” Later, the material says “an average document will be converted from paper to digital or digital to paper 19 times during the course of its life” and sources that restatement as “AIIM” (American Institute for Information Management?).

If a law department a “typical paper document” is a memo or a letter, there’s no way it’s copied 19 times, but it could be scanned for faxing and it certainly could be printed many times. Everyone who receives an email with the document attached might print it, for example. The loss rate has some plausibility