In a piece from ACC Docket, Roel Staes, Senior VP and General Counsel of FedEx Express, does a nifty job of laying out his 8 golden rules for effective communication by telling a story about how he broke the first rule: “Do not speak unless you have something to say.” He was a newly minted senior executive — “proud to be around the big kids without adult supervision,” as he puts it — when the most senior executive at a meeting dropped a bomb in his lap. …
Continue Reading What One GC Learned About the Situation in Russia

One stat says it all. In 2015, 2 in 10 law departments had at least one legal ops professional. Cut to 2021 and that number triples to more than 6 in 10. Wow! The annual CLO survey by the Association of Corporate Counsel is always big news – but this year it’s bigger and better than ever. …
Continue Reading CLO Survey Showcases “Stunning Rise” of Legal Ops

Michael Vernick, government contracts partner with Akin Gump, discusses various aspects of the False Claims Act, including the potential for increased enforcement activity under the Biden administration, especially actions related to the CARES Act, and how companies and institutions can mitigate whistleblower and compliance related risks.…
Continue Reading The Expanding Scope of False Claims Enforcement Activity

According to Gartner’s Hype Cycle for Legal and Compliance, the level of digital maturity for most law departments is shockingly low. Gartner, a leading IT research and advisory company however, goes further and drills down to identify three critical opportunities for senior in-house leaders eager to rectify the situation: establishing (or strengthening) foundational systems of record; enabling core workflows with digital investments (beyond sending emails or excel spreadsheets); and transitioning largely analog risk management methodologies to digital. …
Continue Reading Gartner to Law Departments: Begin with Digital Basics

In a piece from Joe Patrice, senior editor with Above the Law, outside counsel guidelines are forcing law firms to waste oodles of time on “meaningless make work.” Citing Aderant’s recently released “Law Firm Leader Survey on Outside Counsel Guidelines,” Patrice says that while the whole report is worth checking out, the outside counsel guideline issue can be summed in a short list of challenges respondents said they face in managing OCGs: …
Continue Reading Outside Counsel Guidelines’ TLDR Challenge

Jonathan Solomon, principal with Fish & Richardson, discusses the state of the cryptocurrency industry – what kinds of technologies his clients are looking to patent, the challenges of obtaining patent protection in this area, and where he sees the industry heading in the future.…
Continue Reading Patent Protection for Cryptocurrencies and Blockchain Technology

You’ve heard of the Summer of Love. Well, this year it’s the Summer of Lucre. Law firms, awash in deal work, are showering cash and benefits on associates, who suddenly can write their own tickets. This recently prompted a recruiter, Princeton Legal Search Group, to ask an obvious question: What impact is the war for talent having on in-house recruiting? …
Continue Reading The Summer of Lucre

Brendan Miller, legal operations advisor for practice innovation, and Troy Zander and Jordan Carr, partners with Barnes & Thornburg, discuss the typical process of drafting transactional documents and how new software tools can provide more predictability, greater efficiency, and other benefits – for clients and lawyers alike.…
Continue Reading Transactional Document Drafting Receives a Tech Upgrade

In a piece from The Lawyer, Katy Dowell pulled together an interesting analysis of the Big Four’s focus on law. While we have not seen seismic shifts arising from the granting of ABS licenses to three of the Big Four in 2014 (Deloitte came later in 2018), we are seeing a steady and burgeoning growth in market share. And this land grab seems to be far enough below the radar that its victims, big law firms, have not recognized or reacted to the threat. …
Continue Reading The Big 4 (Quietly) Grabs Market Share