Another blog by a general counsel. London-based general counsel Brett Farrell returned to an in-house position with an online financial services company in late 2011 after spending two years in private practice with U.K. firm Barlow Robbins. Farrell has only been blogging for a few months, so let’s see how…
Thomas Lalla, the General Counsel of Pernod Ricard USA, makes a good suggestion about professional education. Writing in InsideCounsel, April 2012 at 10, Lalla urges law departments to “incorporate in-house training conducted by members of your legal team.” By this I presume he means that if your attorneys give short…
As paraphrased in MOFO Tech, Spring/Summer 2012 at 18, an appellate judge made two intriguing statements, one about the relative costs of intellectual property cases – presumably patent cases – and the other about discovery’s wastefulness. Federal Court of Appeals Chief Judge Randall R. Rader “noted that IP cases…
Functions, linear and otherwise. A function of some variable is linear if the plot of the function creates a straight line when you plug in different values for the variable. Think of X=3Y. If you plug in different numbers for the variable Y, the function of that equate creates a…
On the last page of NJBiz’s special issue, General Counsel of the Year Awards (2012), Heartland Payment Systems placed an ad honoring Charles Kallenbach, its General Counsel. At the top, the full-page ad says “Congratulations to Charles Kallenbach for receiving the highest honor ever bestowed upon a human being by…
The In-House Community comprises over 18,000 in-house lawyers and those with a responsibility for legal and compliance issues within organizations along the “New Silk Road.” The New Silk Road is their clever term for a broad swath of the world from Asia through the Middle East. The activities of the…
In-house counsel app. Thomson Reuters has released what it believes is the first iPad app delivering corporate counsel specific information. Called GC Advisor, the app offers information, technology and legal research tips, as well as articles and CLE classes. There is also an RSS feed to CLE-accredited webcasts from the…
Attorney-client privilege II (See my post of Feb. 28, 2012: attorney-client privilege with 13 references.). Boards and GCs (See my post of May 13, 2012: general counsel and boards of directors with 9 references and 1 meta.). Budgets, quarterly (See my post of May 30, 2012: seek quarterly budgets from…
An article about how an actuary at Towers Watson obtained a patent for a statistical algorithm, in the NY Times, May 13, 2012 at BU7, raises several points about law department management. Initially, the employee cleared with his boss that it would be worthwhile to obtain a patent, and then…
Almost seven years ago I listed 12 general counsel who had turned to management consulting after their stint as a top lawyer (See my post of July 31, 2005: from Bob Banks to Peter Zeughauser.). It seems so natural, but successful career shifts from practicing to preaching are difficult. I…