Law Department Management Blog
Pitirim Sorokin, the first chair of Harvard’s sociology department, coined “quantophrenia” for the psychological compulsion to grasp for numbers. “Victims of quantophrenia … obsess over numbers as descriptors, no matter how dubious their basis or questionable their provenance.” (Wilson Quarterly, Vol. 30, Winter 2006 at 28).
I like law-department metrics and wish our industry had a larger supply of better metrics. Even more, I wish we made use of the analytic tools and careful debate that allow us to test and learn from what data there may be. Call me quantophrenic but show me the metrics! (See my category on Metrics and Benchmarks.)
In sum, there are three kinds of general counsel. Those who can count and those who can’t.