“We may want to get to know our clients socially. In fact, many of our client relationships are the result of years of social relationships, through sports or charitable organizations.” Two ideas seem mashed together in this quote by two law firm partners, from Met. Corp. Counsel, Vol. 16, May 2008 at 10.

Once you have retained a lawyer, do you want to spend time with him or her other than on business? Is it a purely professional transaction or also a personal friendship? The trick is not to let personal feelings over-ride effective management of the relationship.

The second idea has to do with how partners find clients: sometimes they meet through an activity unrelated to legal business (See my post of April 17, 2006: golf outings and tickets.).

A discouraging view about lawyers and their win-lose mentality is expressed in the Harv. Bus. Rev., Vol. 86, May 2008 at 82. In the context of “competitive arousal” that afflicts executives during high-stakes, time pressured and publicized deals, the author disparages resort to lawyers. After all, “most of them are trained to see conflicts and competitions in terms of right (who deserves to win?) and wrong (who deserves to lose?).”

This attitude broadsides in-house counsel who seek a place at the decision table for important corporate deals. Sadly, the animus against attorneys lurks just below the surface of many senior executives.

This blog has at least a dozen posts on specific benchmarks for law departments. I will eventually compile and publish that metapost. Meanwhile, other aspects of benchmarks – aside from specific metrics – deserve mention.

A general counsel ought to give thought how best to present benchmark data to senior executives (See my post of March 19, 2005: metrics to defend, not to change; Oct. 1, 2006: visual display of quantitative data; and May 8, 2008: online tool to help graphically present data.).

Processes may be more important to learn about than metrics, but they are trickier to study (See my posts of May 18, 2008: harder to do; May 14, 2005; and Oct. 18, 2005: metrics, practices or both; Nov. 2, 2006: process improvement ratios; Feb. 4, 2008: visits to other departments; and Jan. 13, 2008: benchmarking bad practices.).

Very little data turned in for a benchmarking survey is sensitive, especially if provided to a reputable survey firm (See my posts of April 15, 2007: concerns about disclosing data; Oct. 25, 2006: anti-trust concerns; and Sept. 13, 2006: aggregate outside counsel spend is not sensitive.). What can your arch-rival do to you if it knows your outside counsel spending last year?

It is correct that close comparability of law departments cannot be found in benchmarking studies, but the directional usefulness of industry benchmark data remains valid (See my post of April 23, 2006: golden apples to apples.). Internal benchmarks tracked over time can give much guidance, and greatly diminish concerns about comparability (See my posts of Oct. 14, 2005: time-series measures; and April 6, 2008: law department versus other staff groups.).

Key benchmarks have remained remarkably stable over the past decade or more (See my post of Dec. 5, 2007 [two]: past 14 years.).

A cottage industry collects metrics from law departments and hammers them into benchmarks. For example, Altman Weil (the publications part of which is now part of American Lawyer Media), Thomson-Reuters (Hildebrandt) and Jon Bellis, who carried the PricewaterhouseCoopers survey with him, the General Counsel Roundtable, and Serengeti.

Practice area metrics deserve more attention than they have gotten by survey groups (See my posts of April 9, 2006; July 18, 2006; and May 21, 2006: intellectual property benchmarks; Feb. 12, 2006; and April 23, 2006 [two]: employment; as well as Jan. 25, 2006; Jan. 5, 2006; May 10, 2006; June 15, 2006; and April 17, 2007: litigation; and Feb. 25, 2008: references cited.

Increasingly, law departments are taking a look at offshore legal process firms. When the general counsel does that, a sotto voce fret might drift through the hallways of the department – “worry about your job!” To the extent law-related work goes overseas, that shift threatens someone’s current job.

You can never be sure whether protestations about quality, unauthorized practice of law, hidden costs, and lack of exportable work are not masking insecurity and job protection (See my post of May 23, 2008: unauthorized practice of law.).

The Fulton County Daily Report, May 2, 2008, has an article by Katheryn Hayes Tucker that comments on the Association of Corporate Counsel Eighth Annual Chief Legal Officer Survey, released last month. The ACC invited 5,355 U.S. members holding the CLO or GC title to participate in the survey and 1,166 responded.

The data from late 2007 shows that 85 percent of the respondents expressed deep satisfaction with their career, according to an executive summary released by ACC. One downside, however, are independent auditors.

The top lawyers don't appear to be so fond of the outside auditors with whom they work. “While 59 percent of GCs said their relationships with outside auditors had not changed in the past year, about a quarter of the respondents said those associations had been difficult.” The reason cited by some GCs is that the dynamic had become more adversarial. I can imagine heads butt when the accountants take one position and the lawyers take another.

In its recent survey of career satisfaction, InsideCounsel, May 2008 at 61, more than 1,200 in-house counsel responded. One question asked respondents to choose from a list of 11 the MOST rewarding parts of working in-house while a second question asked them to choose from another list of 11 the LEAST rewarding parts.

“My supervisor” came in fifth out of the 11 demoralizers (5.9% chose it), but there was nothing about managers on the list of things that pump up in-house lawyers. Many people talk about the inspiration of leaders and mentors so it would be good to offer that choice on the next survey (See my posts of April 30, 2006: looseness of the term “mentor”; July 14, 2005: differences between mentor and coach; April 27, 2005: Eastman Kodak offering; April 30, 2006: mentors and threatening successors; May 7, 2006: diversity and mentoring at GE; May 10, 2006: skills Canadian corporate counsel will need; Sept. 25, 2006: mentoring compared to other forms of assistance to employees; Nov. 25, 2006: C&I mentoring scheme; Oct. 31, 2007: programs cut across organizational boundaries; Jan. 18, 2008: rating professional development programs.). Other research shows that the single largest determinant of an employee’s contentment with a job is the behavior of the employee’s manager. That makes sense in the context of a law department.

I began a series on four drivers of employee engagement (See my post of Jan. 10, 2008: “business.”). With a burst of alliteration, the second driver is “boss.” It goes without saying that every boss significantly influences the level of engagement of those who are bossed. Some earn deep loyalty among those who work with them. They are role models, leaders, co-workers who help others produce their best work.

Other bosses are caricatured in comic strips. Boorish or ineffective behavior by the person you report to can ruin your job (See my posts of Jan. 19, 2008: bullying; Jan. 13, 2006: a troika of consequences from managerial incompetence; Aug. 4, 2007: jerks; Oct. 12, 2006 and March 18, 2007: general counsel who are bad managers; Aug. 22, 2006: the Peter Principal; and Feb. 15, 2006 on the ten dumbest management mistakes of general counsel.).

By the way, for in-house counsel the term “supervisor” feels mechanistic and inapposite, too intrusive, although much preferable to “boss.” “Manager” hits the right balance.

InsideCounsel, May 2008 at 61, surveyed its readers on career satisfaction. A previous post comments on the methodology of the survey and a second one on vacation hours (See my posts of May 11, 2008 [two].). In one part of the survey, respondents chose from a list of 11 MOST rewarding parts of working in-house and another list of 11 LEAST rewarding parts.

Three aspects of work appear only on the least rewarding list. Those morale busters are “managing a budget,” “my supervisor,” and “dealing with outside counsel.” Each aspect deserves a moment of reflection.

As to budgets, it is unclear whether the list selection refers to internal budgets of a department, to budgets of law firms on specific matters, or to both. Many corporate counsel have no budget responsibility so those who do must have clobbered that task as onerous. It came in 3rd of 11 (10.6% chose it). Lawyers in companies dislike budgets because they are hard to prepare, time-consuming, conflict provoking, sometimes perceived as pointless, and disagreeable constraints or pressure.

As to “my supervisor,” an earlier item on this blog has commented generally on the effect of supervisors on employee engagement (See my post of May 29, 2008: employee engagement and bosses.). That particular downer came in 5th of 11 (5.9%).

That “dealing with outside counsel” bums out some in-house counsel (7th on the list at 4.0%) puzzles me. Quality of life within a legal department is partly a function of being able to offload work to outside counsel. Outside counsel help relieve the burden of work, take on responsibility for some tough calls, train, and often become friends and teammates (See my posts of May 1, 2005: partnering; and Dec. 16, 2005: complacency among entrenched firms.). Yet no choice for the plus side of outside counsel was on the other side of the ledger. Maybe the negative aura of “dealing with outside counsel” has to do with quarrels over bills, disappointments in the quality of firms’ work, bad attitudes of outside lawyers, or having to ride herd on unruly partners.

Hence, two of the three least rewarding aspects of in-house life also have positive characteristics

Along with the number of posts cited, here are ten more embedded metaposts with links (See my post of May 8, 2008: Part VII.).

1. CLE, continuing legal education (See my post of May 25, 2008 – 30 posts.)

2. Core competence or competencies (See my post of May 23, 2008 – 12 posts.)

3. Discovery teams (See my post of May 3, 2008 – 8 posts.)

4. Pareto’s rule or 80/20 (See my post of May 21, 2008 – 9 posts.)

5. Personality (See my post of May 27, 2008 – 8 posts.)

6. Post mortems (See my post of May 27, 2008 – 7 posts.)

7. Prompt payment, prompt-payment discounts (See my post of May 11, 2008 – 10 posts.)

8. Self-service, self help (See my post of May 18, 2008 – 7 posts.)

9. Specialist lawyers (See my post of May 5, 2008 – 30 posts.)

10. Travel policies for outside counsel (See my post of May 7, 2008 – 7 posts.)

A cause of law-firm vulnerability, where a client wields too much clout, is law-department power. Here is what a small item in Law Firm Inc., Vol. 6, May/June 2008 at 14 offers as a way to think about this dynamic, based on the comments of an Altman Weil principal. Ward Bower was giving two yardsticks for the survivability of a firm, but I think the points apply to client clout.

(1) If your law department accounts for more than four percent of a law firm’s revenues and (2) your fee arrangements result in below average profitability per partner in the practice areas you draw on, you have the heft to push that firm around (See my posts of July 31, 2005 and May 28, 2006: additional services law firms can provide.). The trouble is, no general counsel has any visibility into either of these indicators of leverage. It would not be hard to ask your primary firms for this information (See my posts of Jan. 10, 2008 and Jan. 13, 2008: how much is fair to ask of your law firms.).

Intangible assets – trademarks, patents, proprietary processes, among others – account for approximately two-thirds of the total assets of U.S. public companies, according to an article in Met. Corp. Counsel, Vol. 16, May 2008 at 18. The article even provides a formula to estimate the value of intangibles of a firm [Q]: the intangible value equals the difference when you subtract from 1 the result of 1 divided by its total market value [MV] divided by its book value [BV]. That is Q = 1-1/(MV/BV). For example, if a company has a market value of $100 million and book value of $25 million, its intangible value is 75 percent.

Why, then, isn’t intellectual property -- its development, protection and transactions – not a core competency of nearly every company (See my post of May 23, 2008: 12 references cited to core competencies.)? Why are patents viewed ambivalently in terms of legal expense (See my post of May 23, 2007: strategically invaluable, yet prosecution often a tactical commodity.).