Lawyers in Love?
February 14, 2006 | Filed Under In the News
Is there a summons in that bouquet?
Valentine’s Day turns some clients’ hearts to love. The others’ turn to stone.
Attorney referral service LegalMatch has told the press that this time of year there is a noticeable jump in court filings:
If you’re married and believe today’s holiday has no lasting effects, consider the findings of San Francisco-based LegalMatch. According to the Internet service, which claims to match clients with thousands of attorneys each month, the number of people seeking divorce attorneys increases significantly both immediately before and after Valentine’s Day.
LegalMatch Vice President of Marketing Don Keane told Forbes.com that requests for divorce lawyers rose 36 percent in 2005 during the two weeks before and after Feb. 14. In 2004, Keane said, there was a 28 percent increase, and a 34 percent increase in 2003.
LegalMatch apparently knows a thing or two about conflict. According to Forbes, the company is involved in a spat with rival firm Casepost.
But enough of this adversarial stuff. Happy Valentine’s Day to one and all.
Good to Great with SOX?
February 13, 2006 | Filed Under Tactics, Governance
I guess a sign of the pervasiveness of the law is the idea that Sarbanes-Oxley savvy can jump-start a career.
Fortune notes five ways to hasten the ascent up the corporate ladder. Number 2 with a bullet is:
Embrace Sarbanes-Oxley. If you haven’t already, take a course or two on Sarbox and its myriad implications. (The American Management Association, trade groups and most colleges offer them.) Says exec coach Bill Morin: “If you want to get ahead, you have to talk intelligently about this stuff.”
Knowledge of SOX is important; but the other four ideas resonate more clearly with me. My fave for the GC trade is #3, “Stay squeaky clean,” since that provides a strong platform to lead in all areas.
Part of talking intelligently about SOX is being aware of its shortcomings. Professor Ribstein notes that SOX is under attack in the courts, for some very strong legal and policy reasons.
Law Management and the Dashboard
February 9, 2006 | Filed Under Technology, Managing
What is on the CEO’s desktop?
According to Business Week, we are in the era of the dashboard. CEOs like Steve Ballmer, Larry Ellison and Jeffrey Immelt have shared what financial and operational metrics they are looking at.
What options are there for the GC?
Mitratech offers a TeamConnect Legal Executive Dashboard, which was on display at the recent LegalTech conference in New York. I don’t see any screenshots of the dashboard on the Mitratech site.
Interwoven also offers a legal dashboard for corporate legal departments. Again, no examples that I could find.
Corda offers general management dashboards, and thankfully does provide some examples.
As dashboards become more popular among corporate executives, we can expect more use by general counsel and managing partners.
But Business Week notes that the dashboard isn’t a panacea:
Even Ellison, one of the world’s richest men, concedes that technology — and the power it gives him — has it limits. “People have to be persuaded that it’s right,” he says.
GE’s Jeffrey Immelt also is described as a limited user, as he “…focuses on issues such as broad strategy and dealmaking that the technology can’t yet capture.”
They say you can’t manage what you can’t measure. In delivering corporate legal services, however, matters like service quality and client satisfaction aren’t easily made into simple metrics like “revenue growth by week” or “customer support call length per region.”
Sometimes you have to turn off the computer, walk out of your office, and ask the first person you see “How are things going?”
And then listen.
Advising the Strong-Willed CEO
February 8, 2006 | Filed Under Regulation, Managing
What do you do when the CEO calls an audible with a regulator?
The New York times reported last week on challenges that medical device maker Boston Scientific is facing with the FDA. The Times mentioned previous issues faced by Schering-Plough a few years ago. Specifically noted was a meeting that then CEO Raul E. Cesan had with FDA officials at a company plant under scrutiny in Puerto Rico:
As the executives recall that day in Puerto Rico, Mr. Cesan, a take-charge man known for a somewhat autocratic style, with his color rising told subordinates to leave the room, saying that he wanted to talk to the regulators alone.
“Raul is an extremely aggressive guy,” one of the executives recalled, “but that kind of behavior doesn’t go over well with regulators. I don’t know what he said, but the next week we had inspectors crawling all over every one of our plants.”
There’s no sign that a Schering-Plough corporate attorney was present at the meeting. The challenge is to remind the CEO that dealing with key regulators is a martial art and brute force rarely works over the long run. If you haven’t done this before the meeting, there’s no real way to do it once it’s underway. Unless you pull the old spill-the-water-on-the-CEO trick.
That one’s usually reserved for a potential antitrust violation where you want to leave and you want everyone to remember that you left.
Thus this becomes a key item for any GC briefcase before big off-site meetings:
Email Karma
February 7, 2006 | Filed Under Tactics, Technology
Do you think before you hit “send?”
Merlin Mann of 43 Folders provides a greatest hits version of tips to arm yourself in the war of the inbox.
What I found especially helpful were the hints related to writing effective email messages.
My personal favorite? Composing a great subject line. With a few people I correspond with, I never have to open the message. I can also copy the subject and put it in my calendar. By my calculations:
Shorter messages = read quicker.
Read quicker = act faster.
Act faster = leave earlier.
That’s my story; my name is John.
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