Admirable characteristics of a medium size law department regarding talent

A profile of Respironics’ general counsel, Steve Fulton, has dotted throughout four commendable people practices in his department.

Strong hires and strong retention. During Fulton’s 13-year tenure, “I have never needed to terminate an attorney and none of the attorneys I hired has left” as quoted in GC Mid-Atlantic, June 2008 at 8 (See my posts of Dec. 12, 2006: low attrition in UK legal teams; March 4, 2007: rates of departure; June 24, 2007: blame the general counsel for high attrition rates; and June 15, 2008: Qwest lowers its attrition rate.).

Experienced, mature lawyers. Respironics’ four transactional attorneys average 17 years of experience.

Autonomy for lawyers. Work comes from clients to the individual attorney, rather than coming to Fulton to parcel out. This system allows the attorneys to build relationships with what are in effect their own clients. General counsel should not be the primary clearinghouse for work assignments.

Keep good work inside. The Respironics legal team does nearly all of the company’s legal work inside. The exceptions are international work and litigation (See my post of July 11, 2008: autarky and Respironics.). Keep good work inside and you keep good workers inside.

Law Department Management

So many cottage industries thrive on law departments! A village!

As Rees Morrison points out, there's a whole cottage industry of niche legal services that are making a living off law departments. Here's the list compiled by Rees Morrison:

• ADR (alternative dispute resolution)
• Auditors of legal bills
• Class action claims
• Consultants on law department management
• Consultants on compliance, corporate governance, and ethics
• Corporate governance groups
• Corporate secretary services and software
• Corporate secretary portals
• Court reporters
• Decision analysts
• Document assembly
• Document discovery
• E-billing vendors
• Economic analysis experts
• Electronic discovery
• Ethics line third parties
• Expert witness sites online
• Legal and compliance training online
• Legal research
• Litigation and trial consultants
• Matter management systems
• Medical/nurse analysts
• Offshore providers
• Online selection of law firms
• Part-time general counsel
• Search firms
• Settlement and ADR capabilities online
• Settlement counsel
• Writing instructors

Law Department Management

LWB: The Impact of Children on Lawyer Productivity

Carolyn Elefant:

Having children impacts lawyer productivity in different ways depending on gender, concludes a recent investigation by the British Psychological Society, reported here. After studying the schedules and billing records of 670 lawyers in Alberta, Canada, researchers Jean Wallace and Marisa Young found that when women lawyers have children, their productivity (or at least hours worked) decreases. The decrease occurs because female lawyers with children usually juggle professional and domestic responsibilities. By contrast, male lawyers with children were found to be more productive than their childless male counterparts, which according to the study " is consistent with the dominant cultural view of men as breadwinners, such that those with greater family responsibilities put in more hours to earn more money." At the same time, male lawyers with children were more likely to have a partner who did not work and could assume responsibility for household duties.

The study also examined the impact of "family friendly" work practices on productivity. Interestingly, the researchers concluded that flexible hours negatively impacted the productivity of male staff, but not female staff.

So which category of lawyers is most productive? That would be childless female lawyers, whose productivity exceeds that of their childless male counterparts and male and female lawyers with children.

My biggest gripe with the study is that it uses hours as a proxy for productivity. But as we all know, hours billed don't necessarily correlate to efficiency; indeed, longer hours may signal less productivity, not more. I'd be curious to see, for example, whether women lawyers manage to complete tasks more quickly precisely because they have less time. If that's the case (and I suspect it is), perhaps having children makes them productive, not less.

Starting A Law Firm

Toronto Lawyer Gary Wise has an excellent post on the challenges of a startup solo practice, see Starting A Law Firm.

David Jacobson's Australian Law Blogs List

If you are looking for an Australian blog on a specific Australian law-related topic then I suggest you look at the sites below. Once you've had a look I suggest you subscribe to the feeds of the blogs you like and then develop your personal preferences from there.

If you know of a site not mentioned by me that's worth adding to the list, let me know:
david at djacobson dot com.

David Starkoff (Inchoate)…High Court analysis

David Jeffery (Oikos) government environmental lawyer

Bazpat (Patent attorney)

Warwick Rothnie (Melbourne IP barrister)

Simon Slade (Adelaide criminal defence)

Peter Black (Freedom to Differ)...media law

Law Font (group)…law, technology, economics, policy

House of Commons (IP research group)

Nic Suzor (technology law/creative commons)

Lightbulb IP

IP Downunder

Small firms and solos

Australian Real Estate Blog

Simon Lewis' Lawyers Workstation Conferences

FarisQC Blog

The Legal Soapbox (legal/political)

Dr Mirko Bargaric (Moral Dilemma)

Open and Shut (Freedom of Information and privacy legislation)

Weatherall's Law (last post January 2007, but a great copyright law resource)

And of course, my blogs

• Australian Regulatory Compliance Review (law and compliance)


• External Insights (law and management)


• Technology and IP Business (law, IP and technology)

BlawgSearch and Blawgs Radio

BlawgSearch.com, a search tool for legal blogs. The database of more than 1,000 editorially selected legal blogs is updated throughout the day with new posts. You can sort your search results by relevance or posting date, and you can subscribe to RSS feeds of your searches.

There is also a blawg directory, with subject and locality categories, and a blawg-rankings system. Thousands more legal blogs, as well as additional features and functionality, will be added.

If you are looking for podcasts and other multimedia files, try Blawgs.fm. Now available in its first alpha version, Blawgs.fm searches all of the posts that are included in BlawgSearch.com, but just returns those posts that have audio or video files attached to them. There is also a directory of legal podcasts and vidcasts, categorized by subject and locality, and ranking of the podcasts.

US News Rankings For Newer Law Schools

Dan Filler

Here are the rankings.

Faculty Peer Reputation (1-5 scale) (first year of provisional accreditation is in parenthesis)

1. Cardozo (1978) (2.7)
1. George Mason (1980) (2.7)
3. Georgia St. (1984) (2.3)
4. UNLV (2000) (2.2)
5. Pace (1978) (2.0)
6. CUNY (1985) (1.9)
7. St. Thomas (MN) (2003) (1.8)
8. Touro (1983) (1.7)
8. Northern Illinois (1978) (1.7)
8. Roger Williams (1995) (1.7)
8. Texas Wesleyan (1994) (1.7)
12. Chapman (1998) (1.6)
13. Campbell (1979) (1.5)
13. Florida International (1.5)
13. Mississippi College (1980) (1.5)
16. Ave Maria (2002) (1.4)
16. Thomas Jefferson (1996) (1.4)
16. Regent (1989) (1.4)
16. St. Thomas (FL) (1988) (1.4)
16. Whittier (1978) (1.4)
21. Appalachian (2001) (1.3)
21. Florida Coastal (1999) (1.3)
23. Barry (1.2) (2002)

Lawyer and Judge Reputation (1-5 scale)

1. George Mason (3.4)
2. Cardozo (2.9)
2. Georgia State (2.9)
4. UNLV (2.4)
5. Campbell (2.3)
5. Pace (2.3)
7. Mississippi College (2.2)
7. St. Thomas (MN) (2.2)
7. Whittier (2.2)
10. Ave Maria (2.1)
10. Northern Illinois (2.1)
10. St. Thomas (FL) (2.1)
13. Touro (2.0)
14. Roger Williams (1.9)
14. Thomas Jefferson (1.9)
16. Regent (1.8)
17. CUNY (1.7)
17. Florida Coastal (1.7)
19. Appalachian (1.6)
19. Chapman (1.6)
19. Florida International (1.6)
19. Texas Wesleyan (1.6)
23. Barry (1.2)