Pace of change for law departments

I would like to unveil Morrison’s Change Law. According to this infallible, comprehensive, ingenious, highly intuitive, but totally unverifiable rule, for every 20 lawyers in a law department, the law department can sustain one major management initiative per year (See my post of March 27, 2005 on the value of an inventory of your management initiatives.).

In other words, a 20-lawyer department can handle a focus on diversity for a year. A 40-lawyer department could bring in a new matter-management system and institute a new budgeting regime. With more people, departments can allocate some of their time to pushing through change.

Whoa unto those law departments that violate Morrison’s Law. Unto their lawyers will come the sufferance of plagues like burn-out, cynicism, confusion, and management-initiative failure.

New general counsel, especially, have to decide on their priorities of change and pace them so that the law department can absorb them (See my post of March 28, 2006 on PPG and restructuring.).