An article in Legal Tech. News, April 2008 at 36, lists many easy things any legal team in a company can do to protect the environment. Six of the actions are possible for every law department. (1) Remove your name from mailing lists that send out paper catalogs. (2) Install software that omits the last page of printouts from the web, the page that only shows a line or two from the bottom of the website (they refer to Print Greener software www.printgreener.com). (3) Conduct interviews of candidates and law firms by video conference. (4) Power down computers and printers: “for every dollar spent on IT hardware, 50 cents is spent on powering them.” (5) Distribute more reports electronically and design them with an eye toward them efficient printing. (6) Install lower-energy flat panel monitors.

I will add that one law department I have worked with has collection bags for used batteries and its printers are set to print double sided. Another department has ended the practice of spewing out a cover sheet before each print job (See my post of April 23, 2008: filing cabinets and environmental costs; Dec. 26, 2007: lights and energy-saving; April 27, 2007: environmental sensibilities of recycling.).

An article in IP Law & Bus., April 2008 at 31, states that the legal department of Haier has grown from four people in 1998 to more than 40 lawyers and patent agents. That’s a sizeable in-house legal team in any country. The article mentions that Huawei, Lenovo and Haier “are probably China’s leaders in terms of having large and sophisticated in-house legal departments.”

Posts have been scarce on this blog about law departments in China (See my post of July 30, 2006: metrics on the spending of Chinese law departments.) but we will certainly hear more from that booming country. Observers estimate that there may be 50,000 in-house counsel in China (See my posts of Oct. 19, 2005 #2; Aug. 4, 2007: BYD Co. and litigation; and June 13, 2006: Haier hires firms first, then specific lawyers.).

Many observers believe that general counsel, when they retain a law firm for a high profile matter, pay little or no heed to the potential cost. In relation to the risks involved (to companies and to careers), a few hundred thousand dollars, or even a few million dollars, means little.

“As a result, there is an inverse relationship between the likelihood of negotiating an alternative free arrangement and the seriousness of the legal matter facing the company." That is the bleak but pragmatic conclusion stated in Altman Weil’s Rep. to Legal Mgt., Vol. 35, Nov./Dec. 2007 at 1 (See my post of Feb. 28, 2006: bet-the-company litigation, rare but often cited.). I have sympathy for that conclusion, but think it also fair to point out that expensive, long-running matters at least offer more opportunities for experimentation on alternative fee arrangements – even if just for parts of the work – than do small, quick matters.

Kraft Foods Global won the 2008 Legal Technology News award for the most innovative in-house use of technology. As described in Legal Tech. News, March 2008 at 31, a senior litigation lawyer teamed up with a director of records management as well as the company's IT department. That was a sensible trio, as many times a multi-disciplinary team, with a lawyer on it, is necessary to accomplish a company-wide task (See my post of Jan. 4, 2006: virtual teams; Jan. 30, 2006: Blue Cross’s teams; Aug. 28, 2006: an attack on project teams; and Aug. 16, 2006: end-to-end process for contract management.).

The team turned its attention to litigation hold orders (See my posts of Feb. 6, 2007: PSS Systems for litigation hold management; and March 19, 2006: nuts and bolts of hold requests.). Having decided that the software available from commercial vendors for that purpose focuses too much on the in-house lawyer, not the employee or record owner, Kraft decided to build its own system (See my posts of Jan. 30, 2006: customized patent software; Feb. 12, 2006: US Army Claims Services’ bespoke package; Sept. 5, 2005: a Lotus Notes application; Dec. 5, 2005: Thomas Miller & Co. and its OASIS customized software; and May 23, 2007: disadvantages of customized software.). "It was a huge undertaking, and required approximately three months to fully develop, and many additional months of testing."

The team thoughtfully and deliberately concentrated on creating a system that would be based on the employees as record owners. As part of the application, its Legal Hold Dashboard sends targeted hold notices to employees and requests that they verify receipt. Lawyers generate hold notices from templates and receive alerts if they haven’t received a response from the custodian. The dashboard notifies employees when the hold is lifted and sends quarterly automatic reminders on all holds.

Part of the rollout was that the team created instruction materials and training. All new technology in law departments deserves sufficient training and support (See my post of Aug. 5, 2007: technology training delivered as needed.). The Legal Hold Dashboard complements to other Kraft resources: the Retention Guideline Dashboard and the Compliance Dashboard.

“The motor response of the retina, and the time it takes the image of a word to travel from the macula to the visual cortex for processing, limits the eye to about 500 words a minute.” Worse, most people top out at half that rate. According to Wired, May 28 at 121, there is no such thing as speed-reading if reading includes the trivial detail of comprehending the text.

If your in-box piles high with reading material, your best approach is to read selectively, deliberately build your schema for understanding what you read (See my post of April 23, 2008: mental schemas of experts are richer.), and try to absorb no more than what is necessary (See my posts of April 5, 2007: expectations that law firm lawyers will read about one’s company; and June 16, 2006: costs of reading emails.).

I just heard of a law department with less than a dozen lawyers that has three Deputy General Counsel. Talk about title inflation! The Deputy General Counsel title should be used sparingly (See my post of Nov. 20, 2007: typical roles of Deputy GCs and five in-house lawyers who hold that title.).

Since that post I have mentioned one other lawyer with that title (See my post Nov. 20, 2007: ConocoPhillips.) and made some other references (See my posts of Nov. 6, 2007: value of long-term compensation; and March 13, 2008: gaps in cash compensation.).

According to a K&L Gates ad in Inside Counsel, Feb. 2008 at 90, the law department of American Express has “worked hard at …the generation of revenue, typically through [patent] license fees.” Those Amex lawyers may have worked hard, but to claim that their toil has generated corporate revenue goes too far. The decision to out-license a patent rests with a business manager, not with a lawyer. The lawyer merely helps execute the business decision.

It is no more justifiable for a law department to claim it has generated revenue from patent licenses than from any other activity of its business clients.

To underscore the point, consider an even broader claim. All revenue of all companies depends at some level on a contractual basis, and lawyers probably worked on many of those contracts. Even so, that nexus with lawyers doesn’t mean that the law department can boast responsibility for all corporate revenue.

In general I question efforts of law departments to create the impression that they are profit centers. The desire understandable, the motive admirable, but efforts to bring in money distort the proper mission of a legal department (See my posts March 12, 2005: funded matter management system in return for reductions in reserves; Nov. 25, 2005: settlement funds and recovered amounts; Feb. 8, 2006: DuPont’s collection efforts; Nov. 28, 2005 and Feb. 16, 2006: IP recoveries; March 15, 2006: litigation recoveries; March 28, 2006: profit center at EMC; March 17, 2006: Autodesk; March 15, 2006: insurance reimbursements; May 19, 2006: crediting recoveries; June 15, 2006: releasing reserves; Oct. 29, 2006: Qualcomm and billion-dollar profits; Jan. 14, 2007: GE and business earnings; Feb. 14, 2007: SAP and customer usage under licenses; May 4, 2007: Holcim and legal team ROI; Dec. 10, 2007: DuPont and recoveries of class action settlements; Jan. 1, 2008: recovery of in-house attorney’s fees; and Jan. 30, 2008: DuPont and asbestos recoveries.).

The lid is off this Pandora’s Box (See my post of March 13, 2008: use of Esq. by lawyer not in the law department.). The mailbag of the columnist who tackled this knotty issue bulged with advice. "Many readers wrote that they have been taught and still believe that it is never appropriate for professionals to apply a title or honorific to themselves." Whether in the law department or in a non-lawyer role, a designation that discloses someone has been admitted to the bar offends some people. Very odd, as I suspect many medical doctors and holders of doctorates would disagree.

"Other readers responded that the use of ‘Esq.’ by a corporate officer might be considered misleading and therefore unethical because it suggested that the officer had more authority or knowledge than was actually the case. For example, the statement that ’we will bring legal action’ might be considered to be more threatening coming from a lawyer who presumably had the authority to bring the action than from a corporate lawyer who had no such authority." This convoluted point leaves me confused. Setting aside the “corporate officer” distinction, isn’t it true that any in-house lawyer has the authority to state that the company might pursue its legal remedies?

These readers suggested that a corporate lawyer should use only his or her corporate title (for example, “Vice President for Compliance," perhaps adding the degree (LLB, JD). It does not seem, throughout the responses printed in NYSBA J., Vol. 80, March/April 2008 at 52, that readers distinguished between lawyers in law departments and lawyers who have moved to non-legal posts.

May this embroglio cease, says Rees Morrison, Esq.

Among the many ways that corporate managers of outside counsel decide which lawyer to retain, the in-person interview is probably the most effective (See my post of Nov. 24, 2007: coaches on how to interview; Feb. 8, 2006: a good question to ask; Jan. 1, 2006: behavioral interviews; Jan. 16, 2006: length of questions and answers; Aug. 10, 2007: Exelon’s RFPs and extensive interviews; Aug. 4, 2007: bifurcated interviews of associates and partners; and April 7, 2006: interviewers should look beyond looks.).

Before they trigger such a meeting, however, an in-house lawyer might like to see what the potential advisor looks and acts like. The legal network that Martindale Hubbell has announced it will launch in 2008 plans to allow lawyers and their firms to put up videos. Indeed, the company will help them create the videos.

More on the upcoming online network is in Met. Corp. Counsel, April 2008, at 52, or from Ralph Calistri (See my post of April 10, 2006: listen to oral arguments of potential counsel.).

"The mere thought of being on the receiving end of verbal abuse hurts people's ability to perform complex tasks requiring creativity, flexibility, and memory recall” announces research reported in the Harv. Bus. Rev., Vol. 86, March 2008 at 21. One explanation for the degradation of cognitive performance is that after exposure to rudeness, people think hard about the incident and those thoughts steal cognitive resources from other tasks. Abusive language has toxic effects. Worse, it harms innocent bystanders, something analogous to the deleterious effects of second-hand smoke. A lacerating tongue has no place in a worthy legal department.

This blog has returned several times to the subject of bad behavior by managers (See my posts of Dec. 21, 2005: emotional intelligence declines with rank;.Jan. 13, 2006: trio of consequences of managerial incompetence; Feb. 15, 2006: ten dumbest things GCs can do; June 21, 2006: anger in men and women; March 18, 2007: GCs who are bad managers; Dec. 31, 2006: the “imperial” general counsel; Feb. 7, 2007: men and anger; Aug. 4, 2007: permit no jerks; Aug. 10, 2007: personality disorders among GCs; and Jan. 19, 2008: if the GC is a bully.).