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By: Lloyd M. Johnson Jr., Chief Legal Executive

Deciding to hire a legal department operations executive seems like a no-brainer for general counsel who want to transform the way their teams deliver services to clients. Unfortunately for those GCs, that’s where the easy part ends. There’s rarely anything simple about finding the right person for the legal department operations (LDO) role.
Continue Reading The Essential Skills of an LDO Leader: Successful operations executives fuse talent, tact, and technical ability

MCC Interview with Bryan H. Jones, KPMG LLP

There was a time, not all that long ago, when a company’s general counsel was expected to weigh in on purely legal issues from the sidelines. No more. In a new report based on interviews with business executives, “Through the Looking Glass,” KPMG details just how broad the GC role has become – and how challenging. Below, one of the report’s authors, KPMG partner Bryan Jones, discusses the expectations of the modern GC and the tools needed to meet them. His remarks have been edited for length and style.
Continue Reading Corporate Execs Offer Recipe for GC Success: Counsel who lead from the front with legal insight and business acumen exceed expectations

By: Kimberly Stein, Thomson Reuters

“Doing more with less” is increasingly the mantra that corporate law departments are living by. A recent survey by Thomson Reuters found that reducing outside legal spend and managing limited internal resources are two of the top challenges cited by general counsel and decision makers in law departments.
Continue Reading Knowledge is Power – and Powerfully Efficient: Law departments deploy KM systems to leverage valuable information assets

By: Joe Calve, Metropolitan Corporate Counsel

Unless You Ask bills itself as a “guide for law departments to get more from external relationships.” As such, it is an important addition to the lengthening shelf of self-help resources for in-house counsel (many offered up by consultants themselves eager to help). It is also an odd duck of a document – by turns a menu, checklist, conversation starter, jeremiad, marriage counselor, screed, shrink and opera buffa – all rolled into one.

The 84-page guide is the handiwork of primary author D. Casey Flaherty, former in-house counsel with Kia Motors America and associate with Holland & Knight, best known, at least to me, for his contributions to the popular “3 Geeks and a Law Blog.” He now consults with in-house departments and law firms on sourcing, process and tech, with an emphasis, as he puts it, on “fostering a structured dialogue between the two” (thus the marriage counseling element).

It is noteworthy that UYA is backed by the External Resources Interest Group of the Association of Corporate Counsel’s 18-month-old Legal Operations organization. That pumps serious credibility into the effort. Among the ops bigwigs contributing to the project are: Diana Barlow, AVP of…
Continue Reading Backstory: Ask and Ye Shall … Get More!

By: Barbara Darkes, McNees Wallace & Nurick LLC

I learned in my undergraduate studies in criminal justice that the most successful deterrents to unlawful behavior are the likelihood of getting caught, the certainty of punishment, and the swiftness of the punishment. In 30 years, that has not changed, whether it involves street crime, white-collar crime, regulatory compliance, or compliance with any other laws, rules, or policies (even Mom’s rule to not skip school!).

In recent decades, we seem to hear more than ever about corporate wrongdoing. Is that because of the continued expansion of media sources and people’s constant connection to those sources? Perhaps. The better question, which is the focus of this article and should be the focus of every company, is how to avoid being the next headline.

Leaders in many corporate organizations, especially smaller companies (defined by the U.S. Federal Sentencing Guidelines as any company with less than 200 employees), lead with a misconception that corporate compliance and ethics training is not a concern for them. They take the position, “I’m a good, law-abiding person, so is my leadership team, and we are surrounded by people just like us. We hired them and we don’t hire

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Continue Reading A Game Changer: How your company crafts and implements a compliance program makes all the difference

By: Brian Kim, iDiscovery Solutions and Therese Craparo, Reed Smith LLP

Most experts agree that a sound information governance and data remediation program is vital to driving an organization’s business and reducing its risk profile. But how and why and when and with whom are all questions under active consideration. In this interview, Therese Craparo of Reed Smith and Brian Kim of iDiscovery Solutions give us their perspectives on the rapid evolution of information governance and how it is transforming the way in which organizations think about and manage data. Their remarks have been edited for length and style.

MCC: What is information governance and data remediation? Who should be involved in an organization’s information governance policy?

Craparo: I view information governance as the management of corporate information to facilitate business operations, manage risk, and ensure compliance with legal and regulatory obligations. It is essentially a corporate governance function for managing the most critical and valuable asset of a company – their data and information. Data remediation is part of the information governance process. To have good information governance, you need to make sure that you don’t keep data that you don’t need. Data remediation is the sensible disposal

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Continue Reading After the Data Deluge: “Keep it all, keep it forever” won’t do any longer. As paradigms shift, information governance, including defensible data remediation, takes center stage

By: Lloyd M. Johnson Jr., Chief Legal Executive LLC

For NetApp Inc.’s legal department, the autobahn isn’t just a ribbon of pavement slicing through the German countryside. In symbolic terms at least, it’s the route to the future.Three years ago, the Silicon Valley data management giant adopted the idea of using the autobahn to describe its legal department strategy. Like the famed European highway, the NetApp Autobahn emphasizes speed, efficiency and meticulous engineering, while evoking themes of international scope and destination.Continue Reading NetApp Legal Team Races Ahead: Playing a key role in achieving the company’s business goals

By: Jenny Le, FRONTEO, James A. Sherer, BakerHostetler and Amie Taal, Deutsche Bank AG

Two of the most insidious myths about cybersecurity are that most threats originate outside an organization – Russian hackers, for example – and that it is an IT problem. Amie Taal, a cybersecurity expert with Deutsche Bank, Jenny Le, who runs operations for e-discovery provider FRONTEO, and James A. Sherer, chair of BakerHostetler’s information governance practice, are determined to dispel those myths. Below, they discuss their recent white paper focused on insider threats and the cyber responsibilities of C-suite executives (“Increased C-Suite Recognition of Insider Threats Through Modern Technological and Strategic Mechanisms”). Their remarks have been edited for length and style.

MCC: There was a day when corporate executives could walk the factory floor to keep an eye out for people and process problems. In today’s knowledge economy, executives have limited visibility into employees’ day-to-day processes and tools. At the same time, government regulators and others are putting insider cybersecurity threats squarely on their radar. That seems like an impossible situation. How should C-suite executives deal with it?

Sherer: Let’s start with the metaphor of the factory floor. What can we do to recreate that kind

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Continue Reading The Cyberthreat Within: As companies wake up to insider threats, C-suite executives are looking beyond IT for help

By: Vicki Kramer, Marcy Cohen and Mary Quazzo, Thirty Percent Coalition

Getting more women, and more diverse representation of all kinds, on corporate boards is a goal for a number of groups. Now the Thirty Percent Coalition has pulled together many of them, along with various other individuals with a shared interest, to work together on increasing the velocity of change in the boardroom. Below, two leading in-house counsel, Marcy Cohen of ING Americas and Mary Quazzo of Bechtel Group, Inc.,  join with Vicki Kramer, president of the Thirty Percent Coalition, to discuss with MCC the group’s goals and their own thoughts and experiences on what GCs and CLOs can do to advance diversity in their companies’ boardrooms. Their remarks have been edited for length and style.

MCC: Please tell our readers about the Thirty Percent Coalition.

Kramer: We are a national collaboration of more than 80 members. We’re committed to the goal of women, including women of color, holding 30 percent of board seats across public companies, on the way to parity. We have a diverse group of members that includes public companies, private equity funds, institutional investors, professional services firms, national women’s organizations, government officials and

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Continue Reading On the Road to Parity in the Boardroom: The Thirty Percent Coalition makes a strong case for more women, including women of color, becoming corporate directors

By: Rebecca Love Kourlis, Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System and Brittany Shultz, Ford Motor Company

Nine months after major changes to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP) took effect, the Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System (IAALS) continues its outreach to attorneys and judges to educate them about the impact of the rules on practices and caseloads. Below, IAALS’ Rebecca Love Kourlis joins with Brittany Schultz of Ford Motor Company to discuss the impact of the rules from an in-house perspective. Their remarks have been edited for length and style.

MCC: Can you make the case for why the changes to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure were needed in the first place?

Kourlis: The civil justice system was, and to some extent still is, plagued by inefficiencies and bloated costs, which were undermining access and public trust and confidence. A significant portion of those costs were in conjunction with discovery.

Schultz: The ever-increasing scope of discovery led to a “scorched earth, overturn every stone” approach, which created problems for efficiency, proper case management and resolution of cases.

Kourlis: The Duke 2010 Conference took on the question of how to make

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Continue Reading The Federal Tools of Civil Procedure: The FRCP amendments are waiting to be used by litigants and judges to build a better litigation system