Googleyness and the DGC
April 27, 2006 | Filed Under Managing, In the News
The G-word in this case means “… a culture that has combined legal and business skills, technical knowledge, and a team approach to problem-solving…”
This according to Google VP and Deputy GC Miriam Rivera, as reported by Hispanic Business Magazine in a recent article. A related story on law.com is here.
Ms. Rivera has been described as the COO of the Google legal department, which now numbers 160 lawyers. She also has a very interesting and varied experience base (no, not this one):
Raised by a single mother in Chicago, Ms. Rivera won scholarships to Stanford University. She earned degrees in sociology and Spanish, then a combination law degree and MBA from Stanford Law School and Stanford Graduate School of Business.
After school, Ms. Rivera worked as a strategy consultant for Andersen Consulting (now Accenture) and as an associate in the business and technology practice at the dot-com law firm of Brobeck, Phleger & Harrison. Later she co-founded On Your Mind (also known as Outcome Software), a venture capital-backed business software company. Prior to joining Google, she worked as in-house counsel for Silicon Valley-based software maker Ariba Inc.
While the article mentions that Ms. Rivera was cited by Corporate Counsel magazine last year as one of 10 corporate attorneys most likely to become a Fortune 500 GC in the next five years, I’m not so sure.
After being the DGC of a company that went from $85 million in revenues to $8 billion over a short time, what’s the allure of the Fortune 500?
For Ms. Rivera, who is a finalist 2006 Hispanic Business Magazine Woman of the Year award, the sky may be no limit.
Look Before You Leap In-house
April 25, 2006 | Filed Under On The Dock, Regulation
So says Scott Wiegand.
And from his harrowing days as GC at PurchasePro, he should know. That experience included a criminal trial on federal charges; Mr. Wiegand was acquitted on all of them.
In an excellent and straightforward article in Corporate Counsel magazine, Mr. Wiegand provides six “lessons learned” to once and future GCs, who should consider the downside before grabbing the alleged gold in-house ring when it is seductively dangled in front of them.
I won’t summarize all six; Mr. Wiegand and his coauthors (attorneys on his defense team from Nutter McClennen & Fish) do so very ably.
Item #2, looking closely at the CEO and CFO are key, particularly in the post-Sarbox world. Item #4, talking privately to outside auditors is a great idea; but I wonder how that would work during the courtship that is the recruitment and interview process for a C-level position.
Item #5 is the key for me, albeit one that works only after you’ve accepted a GC position: remember that you are the company’s lawyer. That is a perennial challenge for GCs, particularly with smaller companies facing difficult issues.
Mr. Wiegand is now associate general counsel at Harrah’s Entertainment Inc. He is moving on, but notes the financial toll such charges can take. It’s gratifying to know that there are employers out there who see baseless charges for what they are, and keep a good lawyer regardless.
Driving the Legal Department
April 20, 2006 | Filed Under Managing, In the News
The Midwest fights back…
ALM’s Corporate Counsel magazine has announced that Ford Motor Company has won its “Best Legal Department” competition. Some key reasons:
The nearly 300 in-house lawyers worldwide at Ford were cited for their teamwork in partnering with company managers, engineers, media advisors and outside counsel to tackle litigation challenges, such as the class action and personal injury suits related to the safety of Ford’s Crown Victoria police cruisers. The department’s hands-on approach to legal affairs includes an in-house group that directs its appellate docket and an innovative Intellectual Property group that not only actively protects Ford’s patents and trademarks, but also develops and markets products based on those patents.
More from CC here. Beyond mere technical competence and effectiveness, Ford was noted for efforts in the areas of diversity and pro bono outreach. Notably, 40% of Ford’s lawyers are women.
The legal departments of BellSouth, Du Pont and Microsoft were the other finalists.
Ford’s GC David Leitch has hit the ground running (he’s been in the job about a year) and obviously inherited a great group. He told CC that:
… he’s still settling into the job. He hasn’t made many changes — he streamlined administration a bit, but kept his people in place — and he doesn’t think he needs to. Asked to assess his crew, Leitch sounds like a man who broke open a fortune cookie and pulled out a $100 bill. “I’m really quite surprised,” he says, “and would not have predicted how good this legal department is.”
As they could say in The Glass House this morning about the companies that thought they could best Ford in this competition:
Professional Driver, closed course, do not attempt.
Time for the Wireless GC?
April 19, 2006 | Filed Under Technology, Managing
To swing 180 degrees from the Moto Q, today a brief examination of ADT.
No, not this ADT. It’s ADT as in “attention deficit trait.”
CNET has a recent interview with psychiatrist Dr. Edwin Hallowell, who explains ADT thusly:
It’s sort of like the normal version of attention deficit disorder. But it’s a condition induced by modern life, in which you’ve become so busy attending to so many inputs and outputs that you become increasingly distracted, irritable, impulsive, restless and, over the long term, underachieving. In other words, it costs you efficiency because you’re doing so much or trying to do so much, it’s as if you’re juggling one more ball than you possibly can.
Sound familiar?
The good doctor throws cold water on the concept of multi-tasking, and provides a refrain to which many in this always-on, interconnected age will nod “amen”:
What you pay attention to and for how long really makes a difference. If you’re just paying attention to trivial e-mails for the majority of your time, you’re wasting time and mental energy. It’s the great seduction of the information age. You can create the illusion of doing work and of being productive and creative when you’re not. You’re just treading water.
Dr. Hallowell mentions how Warren Buffett sits in an isolated office and spends a lot of time thinking. Buffett pal Bill Gates doesn’t seem to do this as much. According to Business Week, Mr. Gates has 3 flat-panel monitors on his desk and next month will go off for a week and read 100 papers from Microsoft employees on the future of the company.
Of course, Mr. Gates is rather well compensated for his efforts and had China’s President Hu over for dinner last night.
Did Ms. Gates whip up something like this, that was swimming just hours earlier in Lake Washington?
Moto Q as Lawyer’s BlackBerry Killer?
April 18, 2006 | Filed Under Technology, In the News
While RIM was settling its BlackBerry patent litigation with NTP, Motorola has been hard at work on its new Q smartphone running the Windows Mobile operating system.
Recent reports say Motorola will ship the new Q smartphone sometime in April.
On a road trip to Chicago, your correspondent has observed at least two samples of the Moto Q in the wild, going through heavy friendly user testing.
Company sources tell The Wired GC that the Moto Q will likely be available “in a month.” It’s not clear which month, but I’m guessing May is more likely than April at this point. Verizon has the exclusive for some period of time.
I’ll do a more detailed review later. Suffice it to say that the Moto Q is awesome–light in the hand, thin but solid, with a screen to die for. The integration with Verizon’s EV-DO mobile broadband service is excellent. Fast and fun. And the fact that most law firms and companies use Microsoft Exchange Server could make the total cost of deployment and operation very attractive for bottom-line oriented IT managers.
Some mobile industry commenters have taken Motorola to task for taking too long to release the Q. I think this is a “measure twice, cut once” thing. For the corporate markets that Motorola and Verizon are targeting, it just has to work out of the box, with no excuses. RIM has a serious toehold in the legal market.
But with Motorola, Microsoft and Verizon on the case, I bet there’s a Q in the future of many lawyers.
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