BTI Consulting Group reported the results of asking more than 200 corporate counsel this question: “If you could create the ideal technology solution, what capabilities would you most like to have?” As reported in Law Practice, Vol. 32, April/May 2006 at 13, those respondents most wanted technology solutions to be “user friendly” (19.3%). Next came “document management” (13.3%) and “bill management” (9.6%).

Lagging those top three were the bottom four: “information sharing” and “integrated platform” (both 6.0%) and “accessibility” and “matter tracking” (both 4.8%).

An odd list. Two are characteristics of any software: user friendliness and accessibility (and does that mean whether users can start the program readily?). Three others on the list are applications: document management, bill management (e-bills?), and matter tracking. “Information sharing” goes beyond technology whereas “integrated platform” could refer to software or hardware.

A careful lawyer carefully locates participial phrases, because its position can change sentence rhythm, shift emphasis, create sentence variety, and link to the next sentence.

(1) Wanting to delay the closing past its fiscal year end, Big Company cancelled two meetings and left behind its key decision maker from the negotiating session.

(2) Big Company, wanting to delay the closing past its fiscal year end, cancelled two meetings and left behind its key decision maker from the negotiating session.

(3) Big Company cancelled two meetings and left behind its key decision maker from the negotiating session, wanting to delay the closing past its fiscal year end.

In (1), the lawyer puts stress on the reason for Big Company’s foot shuffling. (2) makes the reader pause twice and emphasizes Big Company and the cancellations. Variation (3) has an almost ironic tone to its added-on explanation for the delay.

Like the flag and ET, who can fault “mentoring”? A wise guide, who shows you the ropes and pulls you along, the Beatrice for whom we all yearn. And all consultants, HR professionals, and career counselors gush about the virtues of mentors. Certainly push anyone successful enough to be asked, and they will pick out a shining mentor who lit up their life.

What could fizzle in this warm and fuzzy? For several reasons, I think honest-to-goodness mentors happen along rarely.

1 – Your mentor can’t be your boss
2 – A mentor is more than a role model, a booster, and a protector. My sense of a mentor is someone who wisely guides the mentee through the white water of work.
3 – A true mentor – whatever that word connotes – is highly unlikely to be outside your professional world (See my post of July 14, 2005 that compares mentors to knowledge coaches.).
4 – A mentor of the opposite gender is a challenge, but an age gap, where the mentor is older, is almost assumed.
5 – Many people are threatened by smart, ambitious juniors nipping at their tails

Clepsydra means the measurement of time by the continuous flow of water, a level of technology and practice that Chinese horology never advanced beyond, J. of Historical Soc., Vol. 6, March 2006 at 77. Here are some of my memories of the long-ago to start your reveries. What are your nominations for old-school, clepsydra practices in law departments?

Steno dictation; thermofax; carbon copies; “for services rendered”; a single bill at the end of the year; partners on the Board who practice at a firm hired by the company; sprocket-wheel printers; no voice mail; wet tee shirt contests (no women!); $20 croissant charged by outside counsel (“Skaddenomics”); wafer-thin Sheppards supplements; red-line pens; lawyers answering telephones; no cell phones or PDAs; no yellow sticky notes…

A previous post exposed six myths which lawyers in law firms often nurture about law departments (See my posts of Oct. 4, 2005 with six myths and Nov. 8, 2005 about the existence of a “buyers market.”; see also the post of March 26, 2006 about BCG’s reasons to avoid going in-house.)

Promotional marketing matters – the myth here covers logos, colors on business cards, trinkets given out at bar events and conferences, doo-dads on web sites, promotional gimmickry and other marketing malarkey

GC makes decisions about whom to hire – no they don’t, except for tiny law departments or huge matters

Easier inside because only one client – wrong again, because with only one client the burden of keeping that client contented becomes heavier than when you can – theoretically – walk away. Deeper than that, a “client” probably consists of lots of individuals, each with needs and quirks.

No marketing needed to be done by inside lawyers – oh yeah? If you had only one client, wouldn’t you try hard to keep that client happy?

Many law departments award stock options to some or all of their lawyers. If companies pull back from doling out awards as generously as before, because the company has to expense the value of the option immediately, law departments will to that degree lose some of their compensation luster. Equity appreciation on those options would otherwise let them compete on comp with law firms (See my post of Aug. 3, 2005 about charging the cost of options to a law department’s budget.) .

Some companies offer arrangements whereby employees can buy stock in the company at 15 percent discount from market, which offers a small recompense.

But if law departments do not need to account for the value of option awards, the change in accounting treatment will harm departments less (See my post of Jan. 27 and April 23, 2006 on option values included in budgets.).

If a client issues stock to a law firm, most commonly the client lacks cash to pay in full for the firm’s services. During the boom days of Silicon Valley, it was not uncommon for stripling companies to pay their law firms cash and also to issue them stock. Apparently the debate continues, at least in Britain according to Legal Week, Vol. 8, April 6, 2006 at 10, where 42 percent of the law firms responding to a survey favor the tactic – they would accept stock in payment of fees – as against 58 percent who would not.

Might a company, facing a huge lawsuit or company-defining transaction, say to its lead law firm: “We expect a discount from your standard fees, but if our stock price one year from the closing date (or resolution of the matter) has risen from today’s price, you will get that percentage rise applied to your fees.” Hence, if the discount was 10 percent but the price of the company’s shares rose 15 percent after the major legal event, the firm would earn back the discount, plus 5 percent.

OK, calm down. Don’t take any part of this idea to heart, but only to illustrate linking legal outcome to share price. I don’t even know if such an arrangement is legal, but perhaps shadow shares as a form of sweetener could alter the performance and economics of very expensive law firms.

According to a consultant quoted in Law Practice, Vol. 32, April/May 2006 at 10, “one major client of several big firms refuses to pay any more for associates with less than two years’ experience than it would have to pay for legal assistants.”

Even so, that client might be overpaying (See my post of Feb. 28, 2006 about complaints over associate compensation, Nov. 21, 2005 on imposed staffing profiles, May 30, 2005 about hiring only partners, and Nov. 19, 2005 about USF&G using only partners.).

Not a seven-syllable word, “law department management” is two-thirds clear, but perplexing with that term “management.” Peter Drucker, according to Nan Stone in the American Scholar, Spring 2006 at127, saw management as “the application of thought to work.” That covers about everything law department managers should do.

Management’s purpose is productivity: “to enable people to accomplish things together that they could not achieve on their own.” Drucker viewed management’s primary responsibility to be to “identify the results and set the performance standards that will constitute success.”

We glibly think of “leaders” as setting goals, and “managers” as overseeing the achievement of those goals. Drucker does not make that distinction. Another difference to him is that management requires innovation as much as systematic abandonment of outdated practices (id. at 128).

Legal complexity (tax). “The number of pages of federal tax regulations has risen by over 40%, from 46,900 in 2000 to 66,498 this year, according to Chris Edwards of the Cato Institute.” The quote is from the Economist, April 15, 2006 at 34 (See my posts of Feb. 16, and April 19, 2006 (#1) on legal complexity.)

Rating law firms. Law departments can learn about outside counsel in trade journals. For example, Reactions, an international insurance industry magazine, published in May of 2005 an extensive survey of in-house counsel. Based on the survey responses, the journal ranked firms having insurance practices by categories, such as dispute management, insolvency, corporate contract, policy drafting, reinsurance, and regulatory. It also ranked firms by country (See my post of Oct. 17, 2005 about rankings compared to ratings of firms.)

Drastic decline in volume of British civil lawsuits. Legal Week, Vol. 8, April 6, 2006 at 28, ran an article that notes “a drop of more than 500% in court-based civil litigation in the past six years.” If that means the number of such cases has dropped to a fifth of the number filed in 2000, that belies proclamations that “US-style litigiousness” is seeping into Britain (See my post of Sept. 17, 2005 on European antitrust litigation rising.)

Another conference with management sessions. The Legal Week Corporate Counsel Forum will be held in Paris from May 10 to 12, 2006 with sessions on best practices, outsourcing, optimum client services, and holding on to talent (See my post of March 9, 2006 on other conferences.).

Non-lawyer specialists in law departments. Marc Capelluto is the “procurement manager for Microsoft’s legal operations,” in the words of Law Practice, Vol. 32, April/May 2006 at 11 (See my post of Sept. 10, 2005 on specialist operatives in law departments.)