Law Roundtable

Research cited in Academy Mgt. Learning & Education, Dec. 2011 at 584, emphasizes the importance of managerial skills and the paradoxical shortage of it. They found that “lack of managerial skill is the most frequent derailer of careers and that...

This blog has a personality of its own. It grows, changes, goes through phases, surprises me with new developments. There is always more to learn about its content, reach, tools and add-on uses. As it turns out, six metaposts have...

While not a fundamental benchmark for law department managers, lawyers per thousand employees may be one that is of interest to some. Based on ALM data from about 80 law departments, their median figure was 1.9 lawyers for every thousand...

Among the approximately 80 law departments analyzed for this post from the ALM survey, not surprisingly almost 6 percent of the total positions were General Counsel or Chief Legal Officer. That means about 90 GCs of CLOs among the 1,510...

Charles Christian’s Orange Rag, January 2012, wrote about a British law firm that selected HP Autonomy iManage WorkSite to replace its incumbent bespoke document management system. Christian mentioned a few other choices to fill that need, all based around comparison...

A recruiting ad by BP in the American Lawyer, Jan. 2012, gave me two reasons to write. The first was the opening sentence in its solicitation of candidates for the position of “Senior Legal Advisor” in London. The sentence sets...

It’s easy to overlook basics. For me, I either don’t notice them or they don’t interest me. But Academy Mgt. Learning & Ed., Dec. 2011 at 584, provoked me with a statement. “Other studies have shown that fewer than 25%...

Some of those who think and write about law departments create taxonomies to classify what they study. A taxonomy creates superordinate categories that are similar on a number of different underlying dimensions. “Structure of legal departments,” for instance, allows a...

Having never defined “law department,” a term that astute readers may have noted makes the occasional cameo appearance on this blog, I thought about what attributes a corporate function absolutely needs to have to qualify as a law department. Three...

As I dig deeper into concepts, processes and tools of law departments, I fear spreading my net too widely. What makes the list and why leaves me unsure, yet it seems worthwhile to make the effort and think about the...