Before social distancing became a meme, largish law departments would periodically hold town halls. At a town hall, the general counsel typically sat with as many members of the law department, or at least of the lawyers, as could fit in a large conference room or auditorium and answered questions…
Few people think of a matter management package as a tool that might play a key role with talent during pandemic separation. But if you think of that software as a repository for periodic, short status updates by your lawyers, you can see how it would inform everyone in the…
General counsel should make every effort to enlist help from the human resources department. People in that function understand how to assess morale and what steps to take to keep employees engaged and productive. They often have material that can be distributed and they have tools available to support their…
Sometimes, simple is best. As a simple step, a general counsel could send periodic informal emails to some or all of the members of the law department. If the GC apprises everyone with the same message, does so with informal writing rather than corporate-speak, and invites feedback (be sure not…
Here’s an unorthodox method to take the pulse of your law department during the pandemic. Figure out a way for members of the department to be able to contribute (text, Slack, email, hard-copy …) comments or complaints about whatever they want – but in a way that makes them very…
A down and dirty survey of the members of the law department can quickly, unobtrusively and cheaply check the morale temperature. Many companies have in-house survey tools and running it through human resources assures anonymity. If no tool is at hand, SurveyMonkey and other free choices are out there and…
Before the pandemic, GCs could walk the halls and drop in on people to see what they’re working on and how they’re doing. With everyone remote, however, a substitute technique is the drop in phone call (or Zoom call). If you chat for 10 minutes or so with a work-from-home…
Status reports, where lawyers periodically summarize the progress they have made on their key matters, have been a staple for years of large law departments. Often an intermediary lawyer curates and summarizes lower-level reports into a report to the general counsel. During the pandemic, GCs might institute status reports, but…
Referred to by a variety of names, what I will call “one- on-one meetings” allow lawyers to spend time with those they manage on a set calendar basis. In the midst of the Covid19 pandemic, for remote, stressed, and fragmented law departments, one-on-ones are a powerful tool for alleviating some…
Let’s look at the Fortune 500 companies broken into equal-sized revenue categories and see if there is any pattern about the law school of their top lawyers. The plot below shows 20 revenue categories increasing from $4.8 billion for the smallest company on the left to $89 billion and up…