The most recent ALM Intelligence metrics survey asked about 26 practice areas, including “Other.” They allowed me to examine data provided by about 70 US legal departments. Of them, eight practice areas accounted for two-thirds of all the lawyer positions. Litigation and Commercial each accounted for around 15%, while Intellectual Property and Regulatory were next most common (7%). International as well as Labor/employment both had around 6%. Securities, Healthcare, and Insurance, at 4% each brought the total of the most common practice areas up to two-thirds of all the lawyers.

From a different perspective, with the exception of Insurance, which was influenced by the participation of a large insurance company, the other seven specialties of law are generic, in that any company might have lawyers who practice in those areas. To learn more about the Law Department Metrics Benchmark Survey of ALM Legal Intelligence, click here for ALM’s website.

One question asked in the most recent ALM Intelligence metrics survey was about the source of lawyers who had been hired during 2010 by the respondent law departments. As it turns out, 44 lawyers were hired from law firms and 36 were hired from other law departments. Most readers of this blog probably think that law departments hire much more commonly from law firms, and it may well be that junior hires come from firms; but for more experienced practitioners general counsel want someone who is had in-house experience previously.

There did not appear to be much difference in the one-to-one ratio as law departments grew larger. It might have been plausible that larger departments would hire more from law firms. To learn more about the Law Department Metrics Benchmark Survey of ALM Legal Intelligence, click here for ALM’s website.

Two out of three general counsel (or chief legal officers) who responded to last year’s benchmark survey by ALM Intelligence also serve as their company’s Corporate Secretary. That is, of 80 respondents, 58 held the dual title and 21 did not. This finding leads me to speculate that privately held companies, without stock traded publicly, may be less likely to bestow the Corporate Secretary title on the top lawyer, although they still have a Board of Directors and obligations to it.

To learn more about the Law Department Metrics Benchmark Survey of ALM Legal Intelligence, click here for ALM’s website.

I had an opportunity to analyze some of the data collected by ALM Intelligence for its recent benchmark survey. Of the 29 respondent law departments that had at least 10 lawyers, 19 of them (65%) reported having at least one "Legal Administrator." In the next 19 smaller law departments that had at least five lawyers but not more than nine, only six (about 34%) reported having an administrator. This data suggests that among U.S. law departments at somewhere around eight lawyers, perhaps it becomes as common to have an administrator as not to have one. Since a ratio of one non-lawyer for every lawyer holds commonly in U.S. legal departments, that tipping point would leave approximately 16 people, whose administrative demands – plus external counsel – justify someone in a dedicated law department operations role.

It is also noteworthy that 11 of the law departments reported having an information systems person (and a total of 30) while three more than that had a dedicated financial analyst position (28 total positions in the group). Sophisticated law departments need specialists to help handle their various needs.
To learn more about the Law Department Metrics Benchmark Survey of ALM Legal Intelligence, click here for ALM’s website.

Research cited in Academy Mgt. Learning & Education, Dec. 2011 at 584, emphasizes the importance of managerial skills and the paradoxical shortage of it. They found that “lack of managerial skill is the most frequent derailer of careers and that roughly 50 percent of people who take management roles essentially fail.”

Many in-house counsel may feel they are not managers, and may not aspire to be. But if there is a secretary to direct from time or time or a paralegal, you are a manager. And most general counsel have someone, sometimes hundreds of someones, to manage. To keep your career on track, polish your management skills.

Law schools prize what is called conceptual knowledge, where lawyers know that this statute says this and that decision said that. Law departments also prize applied management knowledge, according to the article, awareness and understanding of management principles in action. If anywhere near one-half of the inside lawyers promoted into management roles essentially fail at that task, small wonder law departments have wide scope for improvement.

It’s easy to overlook basics. For me, I either don’t notice them or they don’t interest me. But Academy Mgt. Learning & Ed., Dec. 2011 at 584, provoked me with a statement. “Other studies have shown that fewer than 25% of managers regularly manifest the fundamentals of effective management, such as providing clear expectations and goals, involving others in decisions that affect them, and coaching by way of regular feedback.”

Most people fault lawyers for being poor managers of people, so the one-quarter or less estimate of those managers (who are probably in business roles) doing the basics may be too high for practicing lawyers. How gloomy is that?

The other part of the sentence, the minimum expectations of a capable manager, ought to be memorized and put consistently into action by all managers in law departments. Here is my paraphrase of the set: (1) With direct and unambiguous words, tell people what to do and what you want them to accomplish; (2) enlist people in decisions about them and their work; and (3) tell them frequently what you think about their work and how they can improve. The truth too often contradicts these three sound actions; many general counsel, for various reasons, don’t communicate succinctly what they want, make secret decisions, and rarely say much unless it is a criticism. How gloomier is that?

Sloan Mgt. Review, Winter 2012 at 27, shows a wheel with six key talent-management practices. Of them four regularly underlie posts on this blog: “Compensation and Rewards,” “Talent Review,” “Recruitment and Selection,” and “Development and Training.”

What hasn’t appeared here are posts on “Performance Management” or on “Retention.” I think that Performance Management has to do with assignments of responsibility, workload balancing, quality control, and the like. Retention has not posed much of a problem in the past several years because of the subdued job market. In fact, turnover among in-house counsel has for years been very low, so retention challenges are not present.

Stimulated by a question asked of me by a leading general counsel, I researched the differences between the titles “General Counsel” and “Chief Legal Officer.” Some posts here offered background (See my post of March 23, 2005: title expansion and more frequent appearance of CLO; March 22, 2006: differentiates “general counsel” and “chief legal officer”; May 4, 2007: European counterparts as “Head of legal” and “Legal Director; and Dec. 5, 2011: post on this blog with the most number of visits was about the distinction.).

The CLO title is definitely of more recent vintage and is also less frequent than the GC title. Data to support this belief is not known to me, but that is the impression I have from consulting, reading and my posts here (See my post of Dec. 31, 2007: Wikipedia entries for CLO and GC; Jan. 19, 2008: LinkedIn search found “general counsel” had more than 500 profiles while “chief legal officer” had 106; and Oct. 12, 2009: can only persons with bar licenses in the US be “general counsel”.).

Where the title is bestowed, it seems to be higher ranking, with more corporate muscle, than “general counsel” (See my post of Nov. 6, 2007: CLOs get more equity awards than GCs; and April 24, 2009: salary differences between CLO and GC positions.).

Notably, from the instances I found where a named person was identified as CLO – and I generally use the title given in the article cited -- more of them seem to be with internationally disbursed companies, e.g., Nokia. The CLO runs the entire legal show and there are “general counsel” of regions (See my post of Oct. 4, 2005: David Drummond of Google; Oct. 2, 2006: George Lykos of Bayer; April 22, 2007: Gary Graphia of Shaw Group; June 7, 2008: Sabine Chalmers of Anheuser-Busch InBev; Aug. 27, 2008 #1: Blackboard’s top lawyer; Sept. 25, 2008: Kenneth Thomson of LexisNexis; Feb. 13, 2009: Hank Udow of Cadbury; Feb. 13, 2009 #4: John DeGroote of BearingPoint; April 25, 2009: Peter Wexler at Schneider Electric; May 7, 2009: Karen Wishart of TV One; June 13, 2009: Kim Hyun-Chong of Samsung; Aug. 7, 2009: Stephen Swanson of Abu Dhabi Investment; Feb. 2, 2010: Brian Martin of KLA-Tencore; Feb. 15, 2010: Richard Egosi of Teva Pharmaceuticals; May 11, 2011: Joia Johnson of Hanesbrands; Oct. 28, 2011: Dick DeScherer of Bloomberg; and Dec. 6, 2011: John Oviatt of the Mayo Clinic.).

As Louis XIV remarked about Edward Gibbon, “scribble, scribble, scribble”), this blog has repaid readers’ interest in compensation many times – on the order of 124 posts, including some duplicates. At your option, you can benefit from delving into this stock of eight metaposts on compensation.

Compensation of in-house lawyers ex US (See my post of Jan. 11, 2011: comp outside the United States with 10 references.).

Compensation posts recently (See my post of Jan. 12, 2011: compensation topics with 31 references.).

Compensation by level in department (See my post of Aug. 27, 2008: compensation by levels with 18 references.).

Compensation elements (See my post of Aug. 21, 2008: compensation elements with 19 references.).

Bonuses of lawyers (See my post of June 30, 2007: bonuses with 8 references; and Nov. 27, 2010: with 15 references.).

Stock options (See my post of Nov. 25, 2006: stock options with 11 references.)

Benefits (See my post of July 26, 2006: benefits and 12 references cited.).

No doubt, the Human Resources department controls many aspects of compensation for members of legal departments. They enforce corporate policies about amounts of raises, eligibility, mid-year corrections, promotions, titles, bonuses, equity awards and everything else. To regulate its domain, HR obtains data on lawyer compensation and uses that data to support or challenge what a general counsel would like to do.

The HR department often buys compensation data from third-party surveys and the law department might never know about the data or the participant group – or be able to learn from the management metrics that sometimes come bundled together.

To counterbalance the HR hegemony, general counsel take part in compensation surveys, therefore, is so that they can respond knowledgeably and persuasively to the data brandished by HR. Rarely does HR push general counsel to pay more! As with metrics on staffing and spending, general counsel sometimes want their own independent source to arm them for internecine power struggles.