Exec. Counsel, April/May 2010 at 26, in an article by Hildebrandt consultants, explains that a “leading utility company has been successfully working with its retired lawyers for the past five years.” The former lawyers can work much more flexible hours and at much lower rates than outside counsel. “The negotiated billing rates with the contractors are typically a third of outside counsel rates, and the arrangement has reduced this law department’s outside counsel cost by 75 percent.”

That statement suggests that the utility pays its retired lawyers $175 to $200 an hour and that it has turned to them significantly. Since the ex-inhousers know the company and its legal issues, they do not require any ramp-up time. In short, to cope with succession planning difficulties, the mass retirement of baby boomers, and rising costs, the use of independent contractors who formerly worked for you is a neat trick (See my post of April 20, 2009: Procter & Gamble allows certain retirees to work on temporary assignments; Oct. 8, 2007: IBM’s extensive use of retired patent counsel; and Sept. 17, 2005: retired general counsel retained as legal consultants.).

Treading into an area full of unknowns for me, I note from Exec. Counsel, April/May 2010 at 26, some data about USPTO rates for allowing patents. “The allowance rate varied only slightly from 2005 to 2007, from 55 percent to 52 percent.” However, after a blockbuster decision by the US Supreme Court on patent “obviousness,” the allowance rate plummeted to 44.2 percent in 2008 and further to 41 percent in mid-2009.

Many factors determine disallowances by patent examiners, but at least this data gives a chief patent counsel a crude yardstick to measure the performance of those who prepare and file patent applications. I do not know enough to say whether a patent lawyer who beats the disallowance percentage has for that reason alone done better, but at least a metric is available to judge one aspect of performance and results.

A piece in the redoubtable Economist, June 26, 2010 at 69, concludes that cost-saving efforts in the West and systemic improvements in the East continue to favor the Indian legal process outsourcing industry (LPO). They cite a study by ValueNotes that “estimated that India’s LPO revenues will grow from $146 million in 2006 to $440 million this year and $1.1 billion in 2014. The LPO activities in all of the rest of the world are but a fraction of these amounts, I would venture to add.

While specifically referring to CPA Global and Integreon for massive agreements those two firms have signed of late, the article estimates that the number of Indian firms offering LPO services “has swelled from 50 in 2005 to more than 140 today.”

The article also states that in February Actis, a British private-equity firm, invested $50 million in Integreon and recently Intermediate Capital Group, also based in Britain, “bought an undisclosed chunk of CPA Global.” You have to wonder, as LPO providers move up the value chain of legal-related work, whether this will lead to “law firms” financed not through the stock market just yet but through third-party financing.

A numeric norm undoubtedly exists between the number of cases handled per litigation lawyer inside and the number of outside counsel managed by the same lawyer. In general, you would expect that the more lawsuits in the dossier of an in-house lawyer the more law firms that lawyer would manage. If the lawyer had on his or her plate only one massive case, it is quite likely that only a handful of law firms are involved. At the opposite extreme would be a caseload of hundreds of product liability cases each handled by a different local law firm.

I have written about litigation case loads of 20-30 per lawyer as about the maximum for effectiveness (See my post of April 8, 2005: from a survey about 50 cases per litigator.) and I have written about 5-7 law firms per in-house lawyer as a rough guide (See my post of July 17, 2009: law firms and vendors per user; and Feb. 11, 2007: in smaller departments, about three law firms hired regularly per in-house lawyer.), but I have seen no metrics that combine and describe the incidence of the two figures.

If a general counsel decided to drop a set number or percentage of the law firms used that were paid more than a de minimis amount, that would encourage better evaluations of firms. In-house lawyers would also more credibly tell the firms they use that the firms must stay on their toes.

Forced-ranking and lopping off the lowest few might also lead to some gaming if lawyers retain a firm only to drop them. The compromise might be for a general counsel to unleash this effort every few years, to clear out the undergrowth.

My previous posts on this controversial practice all pertain to stack ranking employees (See my post of May 4, 2005 decrying forced rankings; Nov. 14, 2005: arguments in favor of forced ranking; April 27, 2006: forced rankings of staff; Dec. 1, 2006 #3: research findings on forced ranking; Oct. 12, 2006: if turnover is low, forced ranking makes even less sense; Sept. 21, 2008: line managers are unwilling to differentiate among their reports on evaluations; and April 24, 2009: nine-box grid and forced ranking.).

A piece on Gerry Kenney, the general counsel of NEC Corp. of America, explains how his law department handles litigation holds (See my post of Aug. 27, 2008: litigation hold notices with 6 references.). Once they identify custodians who control data that must be preserved, the legal department sends them an e-mail with an embedded template that explains the obligation. “The e-mail includes two buttons at the bottom for response. One indicates the individual may have documents to be reviewed; the other indicates they don’t.” Custodians must respond and the legal department monitors responses.

Kenny adds, in CounseltoCounsel, Spring 2010 at 7, that his department uses its matter management system to launch the emails but Outlook could also do it and track respondents. It sounds like a down-to-earth, reliable method to spread the word and track that people understand their obligation to preserve relevant litigation files.

General counsel can find themselves with all kinds of functions reporting to them. An unusual example appears at Polaris Industries a $1.6 billion manufacturer of snowmobiles and other products. The law department of Polaris has four lawyers and paralegals in her department. Aside from that, according to a profile of its general counsel in the National Law Journal, June 21, 2010 at 6, a four-member export/import group that is responsible for customs compliance, also reports to the general counsel (See my post of June 11, 2008 #5: export compliance software at GM; Oct. 21, 2009: online decision tree software for import/export; and Aug. 5, 2005: a “pre-law” group.).

As with many other corporate functions, what particular mix is assigned to the top lawyer comes about as a result of many factors: ability, interest, corporate history, views of the CEOs, the talents and experience of others in the C-suite, and more.

Roaming the aisles at LegalTech West, I noticed a new participant, Codean. It says that its software, Visualizer, “automatically analyzes legal documents for defined terms without user intervention to generate a live, hyperlinked version of the document.” The software finds, portrays, and analyzes defined terms.

It would help lawyers quickly gain an overview of the terms and how they link together in an agreement. Further, you can change those terms and see how the change radiates through the contract. Visualizer claims to do other things and will be available in beta on an invitation-only basis from July 2010. Legal departments, especially those who churn out commercial contracts, might want to see if this tool is useful.

An intriguing idea comes from a supplement in the ACC Docket, June 2010 after 32. The supplement describes a number of managerial decisions by the legal team of Coca-Cola in Europe.

One change they are discussing is how “to increase efficiency by limiting the number of files created for any one particular matter.” Instead of an acquisition spawning an HR matter, an IP matter, a regulatory matter, and a corporate matter, there would be one master matter. The thought is that a single consolidated matter will streamline control, reporting, audits, and document management. Those objectives and benefits sound plausible.

Reflecting on my writings, five sizes are apparent, each more expansive than the other. The trick might seem for me to match the size to the idea, but not really, since a person can express any idea at any level. I believe in fractal ideas.

1. Rees Morrison’s Morsels are very short, the Twitters of this blog, and always connect to a post previously written. Morsels consist of four-to-six short comments or additions to earlier posts. I have posted 135 Morsels during the 54 months of this blog.

2. Posts are 100 to 250 words in two or three short paragraphs. My goal for a post is to make a single point clearly, although the point can be as trivial as earbuds in corporate lawyers or as profound as epistemological uncertainty about all knowledge of law department management. LawDepartmentManagementBlog.com from its Hildebrandt origins more than five years ago through yesterday had 5,558 posts. Even metaposts, which compile six or more posts on a topic, are not all that long. At this moment readers can research 472 metaposts that compile 6,267 posts and refer to 213 metaposts. There are no less than 20 hyperposts, which each collect five or more metaposts on a topic.

3. My online column, “Morrison on Metrics,” appears every two weeks on the InsideCounsel webpage. Columns weigh in at 500 words or so and they let me flesh out a point more than my self-limited, shorter posts allow. I can uncramp and give examples and offer some consequences of the particular metric treated in the column.

4. The bi-monthly articles for the National Law Journal I write, which for it and a predecessor number more than 62 over the past five years, run approximately 1,500 words and let me expand even more than do columns.

5. My books and blooks wax even more expansively. I have published three traditional books and three blog books (blooks). Someday I may tackle a compendium on management of legal departments, but I doubt it. The effort is too great, the regurgitation too unappealing, and the pressure to fill in holes with generalities turns me off.

My challenge as a writer and management consultant to general counsel is to put good material out there in the right length and link the ideas to each other.