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Risk of loss of non-lawyer specialists in law departments

An earlier post mentions the risk to a general counsel that a specialist who supplements the department’s lawyers, in a practice support role such as knowledge manager, e-discovery supervisor, or database guru, may leave for a vendor or consultant (See my post of March 13, 2006: expert staff at risk of being poached.).

A telling example comes from Legal Tech. News, Vol. 15, May 2008 at 12, which reports that Jeff Beard, who was the Legal Services IT Manager in Caterpillar’s law department, has joined Electronic Evidence Discovery Inc., a service provider.

Compensation schemes of companies are not flexible enough to compete. Also, the job outside offers more variety, although probably at the cost of traveling much more.