Articles Posted in Thoughts/Observations

Another blog by a general counsel. Frank Fletcher, the general counsel of Nero AG, has started a blog at “LegallyFrank.com”. He plans to make contributions every Sunday and in time to post his ACC Docket articles plus some new material. Not all of the topics will be legal (See my post of Feb. 11, 2011: lists eleven blogs by in-house counsel; March 1, 2011: Melanie Hatton blog; March 3, 2011: Mr. Bizzle blawg; March 10, 2011: three more blogs; and March 21, 2011: Rich Baer blog.).

Malpractice for pro bono involvement. A General Counsel I was speaking with the other day mentioned in passing that he discourages pro bono activities by his lawyers because they lack malpractice insurance (See my post of April 25, 2009: malpractice and in-house lawyers with 6 references.). I wonder what such incremental coverage costs?

Nice comments about this blog. Jordan Furlong of Edge International picked 10 “must-read” legal blogs. Law Department Management was one of them and he had these kind words: “Rees Morrison’s blog is the deepest collection of data and insights on in-house law departments available anywhere.” Furlong’s kudo, for which I thank him, comes from the Edge International Communiqué of May 2011.

No one has written about the development over the past few decades of management practices in US law departments. We don’t know when operational methods first developed nor when they faded away. There are no historiographies of general counsel’s efforts to run their legal departments effectively. Bits and pieces of the past appear in the various books on law department management and in articles, but nothing comprehensive or historically inclined is available to my knowledge.

An article in the Acad. Mgt. Learning & Ed., March 2011 at 77, impressed me with its discussion of the relevance of the past as critical to the future. This blogger would very much enjoy trying to trace management in US law departments over the past decades, but children and mortgages and consulting pose some obstacles. It’s a shame we don’t know more about the history of management – even of a single aspect, such as outside counsel management. To know what works and what doesn’t has value, but deeper appreciation and creativity comes from familiarity with the antecedents and evolution of our knowledge.

Save your telomeres. Telomeres stop chromosomes from fraying at the ends. From time to time chromosomes replicate and each time they do it shortens their telomeres. After 50-70 such divisions (a number known as the Hayflick limit after its discoverer), a chromosome can grow no shorter and it stops dividing. That’s bad news as it is one of the markers of old age.

Chronic stress causes premature shortening of a person’s telomeres, according to the Economist, April 9, 2011 at 91. The good news from the piece, for in-house lawyers chronically under the hammer, is that “stress management not only stops telomeres from shortening, it actually promotes their repair.” Another study in the same article “showed that exercise has a similar effect to counseling on the telomeres of the stressed” (See my post of May 18, 2007: stress and pressure with 7 references; June 11, 2008: stress with 18 references; and July 30, 2010: anxiety and pressure with 9 references.).

1.5 million lawyers on LinkedIn. Citing research by Corporate Counsel, Diversity & The Bar, March/April 2011 at 21, says that of the 50 million users on LinkedIn, “nearly 1.5 million are lawyers.” Approximately 5,000 law firms have business profiles and there are 4,000 groups with law as part of the title. As for my own Law Department Management Group, 150 have joined in the past two months and it has more than 650 members; we welcome you (See my post of Feb. 16, 2011: LinkedIn with 19 references.).

Reductionists try to explain a something with a single primary cause – it is common to both the religious and scientific ways of thinking. Astrology is reductionist, Marxism as well, and Freudianism offers another example. Single factors, such as gender or the march of material progress in history, appeal to us because they resonate with a hardwired function in humans, to reduce the number of unknowns.

Postmodernism advocates the opposite of a reductionist approach (See my post of June 7, 2010: plural grounding; and July 25, 2010: multi-dimensional spaces.). It stands behind multiple, inter-related causes. This point comes from Vlatko Vedral, Decoding Reality: the universe as quantum information (Oxford 2010).

To propose some all-encompassing theory of legal departments based on a single motivator would be reductionist, and fatuous. Power could be a candidate, but that is a broad stretch and all things human involve power. Control or elitist hegemony or capitalist gain can conceivably be over-arching constructs, even though laden with ideological correlates. I think the framework for understanding law departments theoretically is more complex. When you realize that physics has identified four fundamental forces (electromagnetic, strong nuclear, weak nuclear and gravity) and no less than 12 fundamental sub-atomic particles, how can you hope for a dominant organizing theme for law department management?

So-called micro-history “takes small events in the past involving inconspicuous people and a limited number of sources and teases out of them stories and meanings that presumably throw light on the larger society.” This quote from Gordon S. Wood, The Purpose Of The Past (Penguin 2008) at 127, holds for law department commentary. Blog posts are a bit like this. Small points, often larger significance.

At the same time that historians turned to micro-histories, anthropologists and ethnographers, led by Clifford Geertz, began promoting “thick descriptions” of ordinary events to uncover cultural meanings that required literary-like interpretation rather than scientific investigation. Reading cultural behaviors as if they were texts became more and more popular and insightful. Ethnography has become the discourse of the postmodern world. With law departments, specialists could “read” the rituals, modes of interaction, office settings, mores, and messages of internal legal teams as “texts” for insightful thick descriptions.

Academy of Court-Appointed Masters (ACAM). This organization “is composed of judges, attorneys, and a few non-attorney subject matter experts who are often called in to serve as special masters” in cases that have significant e-discovery issues. I read about ACAM and extracted this quote from Met. Corp. Counsel, March 2011 at 21 (See my post of July 26, 2008: e-discovery with 24 references.).

Retrodiction. No, it is not speech from yesteryear – retro diction. Retrodiction looks back and applies a theory to fit the past, which is chronologically the opposite of prediction which looks forward and says that something will come about. You can predict the next solar eclipse based on our theories from astronomy and you can retrodict that a solar eclipse changed the course of a battle millennia ago. Good benchmark metrics should be able to retrodict.

Can a general counsel straddle both law and business development simultaneously?

Will there someday soon be an app cottage industry for matter management systems? (Feb. 1, 2011)

Vendors, law firms, user groups or collectives of departments might fund the development of apps.

If the costs of lawyers have risen have risen at the same rate as other artisan-type professional services, where’s the beef? (Feb. 4, 2011)

Brad Blickstein, David Cambria and all the others on the Law Department Operations Survey Board have done a good job over the past three years to collect and analyze data from US heads of law department operations. Having once again extracted interesting findings from their latest survey report, now in its third annual incarnation, I looked back on my previous coverage.

First Annual (See my post of Dec. 21, 2008: three out of four of the 50 respondents report to the general counsel; Dec. 23, 2008: ranking of 10 most important attributes; Dec. 23, 2008: three primary sources of administrators; Dec. 23, 2008: about half manage own budget; Dec. 26, 2008: document management software and its frequency; and Dec. 26, 2008: style of ranking questions.).

Second Annual (See my post of Jan. 25, 2010: chiding LDO over self-serving estimates of dollars saved; Jan. 28, 2010: some limits of influence of administrators on change; Jan. 28, 2010: ranking of 16 ways to save costs; Jan. 29: five more ways to save costs; and March 31, 2010: 31 titles amassed for administrators.).

An upcoming conference on Social Media Law charges widely different amounts for different classes of attendees. In-house counsel pay $695 for the one-day conference. Law firms attendees pay much more, $1,295, but not as much as the wretched of the earth (“Consultants/Vendors”) who must cough up $2,095.

The conference’s topic has as much or more appeal to law firms yet they have to pay 83 percent more than their in-house client? And commercial types pay three times more?

The image that came to mind was “Girls Get in Free” at clubs, while boys pony up a cover charge and photographers face a huge admission cost. The in-house lawyers – desireable BUYERS – pay much less while others, SELLERS, pay much more. Those who don’t contribute as much legal practice knowledge even face the stiffest fee (vendors and consultants).

Once my recent post was written about metrics of Anheuser-Busch InBev, I thirsted for more on that legal department and its management practices. Mostly due to the columns Sabine Chalmers, the combined company’s top lawyer, has written, there were ample quaffs. In this post I have poured together the references to either InBev or the merged company.

The first set mentions InBev only (See my post of Nov. 25, 2006: leadership training for high-potentials; Oct. 31, 2007: survey your lawyers for alignment ideas; Feb. 6, 2008: uses Tedesco Technologies software; July 26, 2008: business plan and speculation on contents; June 17, 2008: tell law firms how to deal with calls directly from clients; July 11, 2008: general counsel of InBev in photo striding along with CEO; July 13, 2008: a compromise for travel costs to a lawyer retreat; and Sept. 16, 2008: role of Corporate Secretary explained.).

Once the merger consummated and Chalmers took the top role for the company, more posts appeared (See my post of Feb. 26, 2009: merger of InBev and A-B; March 15, 2009: fight feelings of insecurity if outside counsel deal with your clients; Dec. 10, 2009: huge travel demands on general counsel; Dec. 13, 2009: lawyers match business’s global footprint; Feb. 25, 2010: post-mortem competitions; March 24, 2011: GC also manages “corporate affairs”; and March 28, 2011: metrics of the department.)