Law Department Management Blog
An executive of the Association of Corporate Counsel compiles 75 tips for saving money in-house in the ACC Docket, Vol. 27, March 2009 at 39. Number 7 goes a bit over the top I would say:
“The single greatest tool inside counsel can use to reduce costs [!!] is to do a rigorous after action or lessons learned at the conclusion of each matter. That process should focus on two elements: First, what could your team have done more effectively and more efficiently? Second, what could your company do to avoid repeating a negative situation or re-creating a good process?”
The twin inquiries make sense, but I would not go so far as to elevate post-mortems to the top of the heap of money-savers nor would I advocate conducting them after every matter (See my post of May 27, 2008: post mortems with 7 references.). The knowledge-extraction effort makes sense on large matters and only on those where what is extracted is likely to be available and help on subsequent, similar matters.