Law Department Management Blog
National wealth and solid legal systems support each other, which also justifies management-savvy law departments. Or that is my take-away from a chart in strategy+bus., Winter 2010 at 17. The chart shows manufacturing as a percent of GDP for close to 100 countries. The “innovation-driven nations,” those 36 with per capita income over $17,000, account for a large share of the participant companies in my benchmark survey. Among that wealthy group, where manufacturing accounts for 10-20% of GDP, are the US (358 participants), Canada (60), UK (46), Netherlands (32), Australia (16), and Belgium (13). For two countries, manufacturing looms even larger: Germany (18 participants) and Singapore (15). The only country in this top nine of benchmark survey participants by number that has lower per capita income is the Russian Federation, with 15 participants.
In sum, these 573 participants (80% of the total 702) are headquartered almost completely in the wealthiest countries of the world. Their countries also have similar profiles in terms of the economic importance of manufacturing. Law departments depend on and help create national wealth. As to manufacturers in the General Counsel Metrics set, 16% (116) are manufacturers, which means my proportion fairly closely matches manufacturing’s proportion of GDP.