Ten most thought-provoking posts from June on LawDepartmentManagementBlog.com, IMHO

Mindsets that ought to undergird effective alternative fee arrangements (June 2, 2010)

Six ways of thinking need to mesh for a law department to have confidence that a law firm will perform well under an alternative fee arrangement.

The “standard hourly rate” is ephemeral – same timekeeper often bills different rates to different clients (June 3, 2010)

A rigid hourly rate for a lawyer makes no sense

“Plural grounding” presents arguments for or against without setting priorities (June 7, 2010)

Amartya Sen writes that people can have a variety of criticisms or supporting arguments “yet not agree on one particular ground as being the dominant reason for the diagnosis.”

Not structure but decision-making prowess sets a legal department above the crowd (June 9, 2010)

“[P]performance is not determined solely by the nature, scale and disposition of resources, it is “the organization’s ability to make and execute key decisions better and faster than competitors.”

One quarter of US law departments average less than one law suit per year! (June 13, 2010)

Their companies had ‘less than 5’ state or federal civil cases in the last five years – less than one per year, on average.”

Internet tools and offerings retard our ability to concentrate, absorb, and learn (June 16, 2010)

Information overload and interruption from the Internet cause significant problems in concentration, retention, and processing.

No prospect of agreement on a dominant value that defines the “best law departments” (June 17, 2010)

Amartya Sen believes that no single value will ever be recognized widely as the ultimate for purposes of defining and dispensing justice.

Eight suggestions for cc’s on email messages to unclog mailboxes (June 21, 2010)

Eight ideas.regarding cc’s on email messages.

Perhaps occasionally force-rank your outside counsel and drop the laggards (June 30, 2010)

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.

Hire your retired lawyers to save money and time (June 30, 2010)

For one department, contractor rates were typically a third of outside counsel rates, and the arrangement reduced its outside counsel cost by 75 percent.