Law Department Management Blog
GCs who report to the CEO are paid more, and a few thoughts on reasons why (March 2, 2010)
It could be that they report to someone lower than the CEO, with a lower compensation ceiling. Or they are less experience or manage fewer functions.
Legal departments of US companies that do business worldwide will steadily disperse around the globe (March 2, 2010)
A general counsel believes that continued geographic dispersion of his lawyers is an inexorable trend.
Learn and retain better when you take a test on material before you study it (March 8, 2010)
The benefits when you test yourself on material you are about to review carefully.
Myth or reality? Smaller legal departments are harder pressed than larger ones (March 11, 2010)
Neither camp holds the high ground of correctness.
A Qwest for fair billing arrangements – four arguments against fixed fees (March 16, 2010)
I disagree with several points made recently against fixed fee arrangements.
“Only raise issues that have dollars attached to them” (and four thoughts about that view) (March 16, 2010)
The admonition has much merit and produces four corollaries.
Insights into how legal departments imitate the practices of other departments (March 23, 2010)
The authors distinguish three fundamental bases for how organizations, presumably including legal departments, copy each other: frequency-based, trait-based and outcome-based imitation.
Four nuances of attributes of “lawyer,” such as in lawyers per billion of revenue (March 30, 2010)
If we knew more precisely the attributes of lawyers in legal departments, we would move closer to understanding how those lawyers influence metrics, productivity and quality. Four attributes illustrate the claim.
Only half of all CLOs in the US are promoted from within the legal department (March 30, 2010)
In slightly more than half of legal departments in the Fortune 500 the new general counsel came from the ranks of the company’s legal department, the remainder presumably coming from another legal department or a law firm.
Information asymmetry about the quality of work to come from a law firm is not such a big deal (March 31, 2010)
While it is true that an in-house lawyer who hires a partner cannot touch and feel the legal services to be provided, there are ways to mitigate that disadvantage.