Lawyers hate strategic planning, but the author argues that such plans allow you and your department to learn how, and with whom, to interact for peach performance. Peter Drucker is a demigod in corporate circles. Learn how to apply his management principles to your law department.
This article will show you how to determine whether ebilling is a good move for you, and if so, how to select a system that is a good fit for both your law department and your outside law firms.
This article contains horoscopes for the people in legal departments.
Read more to see Joe's tips on litigation management for in-house counsel.
Litigation, in particular, is an area in which most of us have to rely on outside counsel to help shoulder the workload. How do you keep costs down without sacrificing quality? How do you and your outside partners plan and budget for situations that are inherently difficult to predict? The answer is that you can’t, completely, but the first step is making sure that your relationship with your outside firms is solid.
If your litigation management plan consists of 1. Call outside counsel, 2. wash hands. You can do better for your company. Find out how taking some simple steps today on document retention and destruction, and ensuring attorney-client privilege, will make your life in a small law department infinitely better when, not if, your company gets sued. Plus, tips on what to do (or not) once the suit has been filed.
So you've selected the brilliant lead trial attorney you need for that big case that just got filed against your company. But what about the case manager? Using a case manager--not simply inside counsel who oversees or monitors the case, but an actual attorney-manager who coordinates all the players and the strategy? You can save money by focusing on the result, not just the legal issues.
Read this article discussing the importance of staff retention and in-house lawyers.
Discusses how to find the right outside foreign counsel to handle problems such as products your vice president sold into Denmark, Argentina, and Taiwan are defective or a tanker unloading your chemicals just spilled some in a harbor in Zaire.
Discusses a checklist to verify and approve outside counsel bills by scrutinizing them for compliance with outside counsel retention policies.