A mission statement (or value statement) “is bigger than and different from strategies, which are bigger than and different from plans and goals.” Fatal Illusions at 45. A mission statement tells a law department where it is going; strategies tell it how to get there; and plans and goals tell it how to implement and measure its strategies.

Not bad for distinguishing these slippery tools of law department management.

See my previous posts on mission statements: April 8, 2005 on their being impossible; Aug. 3, 2005 on making them part of daily behavior; Aug. 3, 2005 on mistakes made developing them; Aug. 3, 2005 on “alignment with clients;” Aug. 26, 2005 with an Orwellian satire; and Oct. 21, 2005 on three tests for their usability.

Casemaker is an online legal research program provided free to lawyer-members of Consortium states. Each member bar shares its library with all the other members’ bars. “The goal of Casemaker is to take care of 90% of lawyers' research needs 90% of the time.” For more information, see the Georgia Bar Association website.

The Corporate Counsel Net appears to cost about $1,000 to $3,000 a year but provides a huge amount of information in securities and corporate finance law.

Over time, more and more practice information will be available for free or at low cost on the Web, and search engine tools will improve – perhaps even being optimized for legal research with built in thesauruses of legal terms. Information as a commodity will profoundly shape the practice of law within and without the corporate walls.

From my experience of having consulted on seven competitive bids, I cannot stress too much the crucial step of identifying assumptions. The proposing law firms and the law department should both state as many assumptions as they can and how they are relying on them. For example, “our bid assumes no more than four investigations in any 12 month period.” Only by doing that can both sides narrow the range of uncertainty. Thus, if the law department says, “No, assume no more than two investigations,” the law firms can more accurately bid on the work.

It is best to circulate all assumptions to all proposers, so that the information level remains equally high all around.

European Union member states are split over the issue of privilege for corporate lawyers – 13 extend the privilege to them and 12 do not (Legal Week, Oct. 6, 2005 at 8). Surveys show, nonetheless, that lawyers per billion Euro of revenue stand as high in Europe as they do in the US, so the absence of the privilege hasn’t deterred companies from hiring in-house. Someone should research differences in that metric between privilege and non-privilege countries.

One other point. An opponent of the privilege said “that as in-house counsel you are inevitably in a state of conflicting interests.” Yes, getting the next pay check deters full objectivity, but don’t tell me that getting the next invoice paid doesn’t deter full objectivity. Both employees and partners resign very reluctantly.

I also wonder about the applicability of the privilege. For example, if an in-house counsel works for a law department of a company incorporated in a non-privilege country, does it make any difference if the lawyer practices in a privilege country? Conversely, if a US company has an in-house lawyer in a non-privilege country, does that lawyer lose or keep the privilege?

Data from Legal Week Intelligence’s 2005 Client Satisfaction Survey of more than 220 companies in the FTS 1000 ranks 11 categories of law firm attributes. (Legal Week, Vol. 7, Sept. 22, 2005 at 4.)

“Quality of legal advice,” “Service delivery,” and “Responsiveness” share the highest scores (median 9 out of 10). “Quality of commercial advice,” “Personal relationship/accessibility,” (median of 8) followed, with “Cost” and “Billing transparency” below them (7.5). At the bottom came “Added value,” “Partner involvement,” “IT/knowledge management,” and “International capability” (median 6).

I am unsure what “commercial advice” means (as compared to “legal advice”), but it may be advice on the business side, as compared to the legal side.

What stands out to me is the low ranking of “Added value,” which I would have thought distinguishes firms that are otherwise fungible in quality and cost. Likewise, knowledge management seems maligned, when it undergirds legal advice and responsiveness, among other attributes.

A Legal Week/EJ Legal Big Question survey of 100 senior UK-based partners found rampant discounting, which the British refer to as “low-balling.” “In addition, more than two thirds of lawyers (67%) admitted to ‘sometimes’ doing work at unprofitable rates.” (Legal Week, Vol. 7, Sept. 22, 2005 at 4.)

I have heard the typical breakdown of associate billing rates as covering one-third compensation, one-third overhead, and one-third partner profit. If that split is approximately correct, then the discounts on associate rates – to reach an unprofitable level – would have to be on the order of 33 percent.

It troubles me not a whit if sometimes firms accommodate clients with steeply discounted services. There’s no Eleventh Commandment that decrees all law firms should always make money.

JennerNet is Jenner & Block’s system that collects information from the firm’s accounting, e-mail, conflicts, records, HR, document management, customer relationship management (CRM), and other unstructured databases (Law Practice, Vol. 31, Oct./Nov. 2005 at 8). JennerNet apparently allows law departments to see billing information about their matters, documents and e-mails related to those matters, all by way of an extranet and at no cost.

Is that what clients want? Do law department lawyers want to know what has been billed on a matter as of yesterday? Will they care about internal law firm documents and drafts, or only finished product? Is this a technological marvel looking for a need?

A financial institution’s law department has prepared a four-page summary of the steps administrative staff should take to assure proper and prompt payment of outside counsel bills. The exhortation at the start, urging timely processing, states that “late bills can incur interest charges, which the [Company] does not want to pay.”

One section covers obtaining approval to pay the bill, including stamping it and filling in the correct information for accounts payable. Another section describes how to look up information about a bill on the invoice database. The third and final section explains step-by-step how to make sure accounts payable has sent the check.

Law departments that document their administrative processes not only improve quality and consistency, they also can train backups and replacements more easily, and can scrutinize the steps of the processes for opportunities to streamline them.

Structured settlements: A comment from John Darer deserves quoting. “In addition to the application of structured settlements for physical injury there are also non-qualified assignments ("NQA") for the resolution of matters which do not qualify for the tax exclusion (but can be deferred through an NQA) and would be taxable all at once if paid in a lump sum. For example, an NQA could be considered in virtually any type of employment scenario, divorce, attorney fees, punitive damages, policy buyouts, installment sales of real estate or businesses (a new application, environmental clean up funding), and more.”

Independent counsel for audit committee of Board. For a solid article on this topic, which I only addressed in terms of legal costs and issues with the counsel chosen by the committee (or Board), see GC New York, Oct. 11, 2005 at 4. “The most obvious example of the need for independent counsel is when there are allegations of management misconduct.” (id. at 5) Could that be every class action or shareholders’ derivative action that names the CEO and other officers?

Law firms not distinguished for thinking innovatively. Fulbright & Jaworski’s Second Annual Litigation Trends Survey asked respondents, who were primarily GCs or senior law department lawyers, to “identify the three most distinguishing attributes of your most successful outside counsel.” The report (Full report at 80) lists eight attributes and “other.” The least often identified attribute was “creative.” Only six percent of the respondents included that attribute in their three. Either innovative thinking rarely comes from “most successful outside counsel” or law departments can’t accept new ideas so they spurn them, or law departments value every other attribute much more.

The chief intellectual property officer (CIPO) is a position that has recently been created at several large companies, including IBM, HP, SAP, Yahoo!, Boeing, GE, and Microsoft.

The CIPO is the senior officer of the company responsible for maintaining and enhancing a company's return on investment for its IP assets, and a primary responsibility is the creation and maintenance of a worldwide patent portfolio. Traditionally, the chief IP attorney of the company, reporting to the general counsel, has handled IP assets. The CIPO is part of executive management and is able to direct the IP decisions of all parts of the company. Managing Intellectual Prop., Oct. 2005 and Hildebrandt Headlines of Oct. 28, 2005.