Law Department Management Blog
Headhunters place one in seven in-house lawyers. According to a recruiter at a panel I attended, “recruiters are responsible for about 15 percent of all placements of lawyers in law departments” (See my post of Oct. 26, 2005 where I speculated on the sources of hires, and plucked out the figure of 12.4% from executive search firms!).
Law school center for creative problem solving. The Center for Creative Problem Solving, based at California Western School of Law, draws on traditional analytic processes and other techniques from business, psychology, economics, neuroscience, and sociology among other disciplines (See my post of Nov. 24, 2007 on creativity and references cited.).
In-house author of thriller. Andrew E. Shipley, the associate general counsel litigation of Northrop Grumman hopes he has written a best seller. His political thriller, The Messenger, has just been published. According to Inside Counsel, Oct. 2007 at 13, Shipley worked three years on the novel. The book is available on Amazon.com and Borders.com. This blog has been honored to have Shipley contributes several posts.
Monitor your initial, emotional reaction to a new decision, and then decide. An item in the NY Times, Nov. 17, 2005 at C5, summarizes some research on intuitive decision-making. “People first respond emotionally to new situations, and only then do cognitive processes kick in.” If an in-house lawyer confronts a novel situation, the first reaction might be visceral. For that reason, “to improve intuition, managers must work on harnessing their emotional intelligence – that is, they need to recognize and interpret their emotions” (See my posts of July 31, 2005 on emotional intelligence as a predictor of career success; July 14, 2005 on another set of definitions Nov. 13 2005 on it and three other attributes of lawyers; Dec. 21, 2005 on the loss of EI with promotions; Feb. 8, 2006 on it as a predictor of career success.).