Amorphous Support Services
January 30, 2008 | Filed Under The Client Speaks, Legal Resources
Sometimes outside counsel ask me why so many GCs seem preoccupied with costs. What about results? What about the best in legal services? What about covering your @ss?
Well, I submit as Exhibit A an opinion piece in the Financial Times by Luke Johnson, chairman of UK’s Channel 4 and founder of Risk Capital Partners, a private equity firm.
Mr. Johnson’s article is entitled “The truth about the HR department,” and at first blush it appears as yet another screed against the intrepid souls in HR:
The brilliant Avis boss Robert Townsend in his book Up the Organisation suggests firing the entire personnel department. Indeed, I have radically downsized HR in several companies I have run, and business has gone all the better for it.
But before in-house counsel can get complacent, Mr. Johnson expands his field of view:
HR is like many parts of modern businesses: a simple expense, and a burden on the backs of the productive workers. Other divisions that can become the enemy include IT, legal and marketing. They don’t sell or produce: they consume. They are the amorphous support services.
Ouch.
To complete the connect-the-dots exercise on operating-related legal services: to someone with Mr. Johnson’s DNA, if you are retained by one of the “amorphous support services,” guess what you are by association?
So if your friendly neighborhood GC seems like a one-note-band on costs (and trying to master another note, demonstrating value), try to be a little understanding. Mr. Johnson may be the CEO in the office down the hall. And he just called that very GC into his office after reading the revised forecast for outside services.
What if the Law were more like Lego?
January 28, 2008 | Filed Under Law 2.0, In the News
I realized this morning that I’m almost as old as Lego (R); today is the 50th anniversary of the little brick that sticks.
I was weaned on the old-school Lego, and my sons spent many a lazy afternoon with slightly upgraded versions as well (although they preferred the basic stuff). Today’s varieties are almost unrecognizable from where things started.
As you’d expect, Lego’s lawyers are watchful over those who would copy these iconic products.
So I got to thinking: what would the law be like if it were more like Lego? Here’s my top seven:
1. All the pieces would fit together.
2. You could share parts of it with others and it would always work.
3. The best things resulted when you didn’t follow the directions.
4. If you spent hours with it, it wouldn’t cost any more.
5. It worked as well alone or in a group.
6. You could extend it easily in new and creative ways.
7. And you could just as easily tear it apart and start over.
I did learn early on that the big red ones just look like hard candy.
Even Google today is getting into the act:
(Update: Gizmodo has a cool Lego timeline.
Sacre Bleu!
January 25, 2008 | Filed Under Criminal Liability, Compliance
$7 billion buys a lot of compliance training and even more monitoring technology, n’est pas?
Here’s a slide to put in the deck:
And who says life doesn’t imitate art?
Jerome Kerviel, Societe Generale, 2008
Bud Fox, Wall Street, 1987
Tyco + Eversheds = Sea Change
January 22, 2008 | Filed Under Law Firm Trends, Technology, New Services
An innovation is by definition notable. Revisiting it one year on can be very instructive.
Thelawyer.com has just such a review of Eversheds’ landmark deal last year with Tyco. I covered the initial announcement here, calling it “Convergence Like a Laser Beam.”
You’ll recall the jaw-dropping nature of the deal: Tyco replaced 175-200 law firms with one, Eversheds. Other clients such as Samsung and Azko Nobel have climbed aboard the E-train.
Fiona Smith, the GC of Severn Trent, another new all-in client of Eversheds, goes on the record:
“Eversheds impressed significantly in the selection process as a firm that would invest time and energy in getting to know our business and as a firm that would be committed to helping us all get the very best advice at a reasonable and transparent cost,” says Smith.
Part of Eversheds’ approach is using something most law firms talk about but few use well: technology applied smartly:
So what is the secret weapon that Eversheds uses to get general counsel salivating with its reasonable and transparent costs? According to Eversheds, it is that cornerstone of business - a computer software package.
The program, dubbed the ‘Global Account Management System’, or Gams as it is known affectionately at Eversheds, is the centrepiece of the firm’s tenders.
Gams (not the most gender-neutral moniker, by the way…) allows clients like Tyco to approve work on a case or transaction before work begins. And that is sweet music to any GC or managing counsel who opens a monthly statement and sees a new matter, running into five figures, that is news to them.
Explains Eversheds energy chief Stephen Hopkins:
“No work on any case or transaction for Tyco can start without its approval,” says Hopkins. “If Tyco hasn’t approved it and we just go ahead anyway, we will not get paid.”
Some firms are no doubt looking at 2008 with trepidation. A few may think that the answer is raising rates or pushing fee-earner utilization (i.e., hours billed) higher.
What Tyco-Eversheds shows is that such firms are not facing squarely what is going on in the global corporate legal services market.
Wake up and take a deep breath…
The Key 3 from Colin Powell
January 18, 2008 | Filed Under The Client Speaks, General
The New Yorker has an article this week about Mike McConnell, the current director of National Intelligence.
When writer Lawrence Wright is recounting Mr. McConnell’s experience in the 1990s as an aide to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, he describes a notable encounter with then-chairman General Colin Powell. Mr. McConnell was briefing the general on developments in the first Iraq war, and fell short with some answers.
Expecting to be upbraided, Mr. McConnell was surprised when General Powell was not troubled by the words “I don’t know,” and responded instead with his rules for an intelligence agent:
Tell me what you know, then tell me what you don’t know, and only then can you tell me what you think. Always keep those three separated.
Since legal counsel are agents of intelligence, I found this worth writing down.
(No mention whether Mr. Powell was still employing these three rules when being briefed in advance of his later testimony before the United Nations.)
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