For law departments with offices all over the globe, it can be prohibitively expensive to bring their lawyers together. A technological alternative comes from IBM (Economist, Vol. 378, Jan. 21, 2006 at 10.). The gist of the short mention is that “IBM recently held a 72-hour chat session (which is called a ‘jam’) among employees from 75 different countries to discuss the company’s values, and plans to hold more.”
A law department could conduct something similar, which would encourage departmental collaboration, communication, problem-solving and consensus. Perhaps if a law department holds a global retreat periodically, departmental chat sessions could take place in between.