Operations

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By Reese Arrowsmith, Association of Corporate Counsel (ACC)

Intro: Reese Arrowsmith, who heads legal operations at Campbell Soup Company, is the inaugural chair of the legal operations membership section of the Association of Corporate Counsel (ACC). He spoke with us about his new role at ACC, the growth he’s seen in the field of legal operations and where he thinks it’s going next. His comments have been edited for style and length.Continue Reading ACC Is All In on Legal Operations: The association’s first chair of its ops section explains why

By Rees Morrison, Altman Weil, Inc.

The Roman god Janus looked both ways at once. That’s an apt metaphor for the divergence in how lawyers look at the use of data in management decisions. Some lawyers look askance at data being used to augment decisions; others look with favor on it. The more clearly that lawyers understand the conflicting bases for their own views and those of their colleagues, the more adroitly they will deal with data in decisions.Continue Reading A Metrics Conundrum: What Would Janus Do?: Lawyers are sometimes torn when considering how much to rely on data

By Yvette McGee Brown, Jones Day

Introduction: Yvette McGee Brown, a native of Columbus, Ohio, has had a varied career. She’s been a common pleas court judge, she ran the child abuse and behavioral health division of a children’s hospital, she made a run for lieutenant governor of Ohio, she’s served on the Ohio Supreme Court, and now she is a litigator at Jones Day. Given the diversity of her career, it seems like poetic justice that she serves as Partner-in-Charge of Diversity, Inclusion and Advancement at the firm. Below, she discusses her career and her role in promoting diversity in the profession, at Jones Day and beyond. Her remarks have been edited for length and style.Continue Reading Definitively Driving Diversity: Exposing students to law firm life early can make all the difference

By Stephanie Mullette, Robert E. Bostrom, National Association of Corporate Directors (NACD), Abercrombie & Fitch

Introduction: As the role of general counsel has evolved, they are increasingly called upon to provide corporate boards with advice on company strategy and business operations. This has led the National Association of Corporate Directors (NACD) to launch a new initiative, the Strategic-Asset GC, designed to help boards fulfill their mission of creating long-term corporate value. Stephanie Mullette, NACD’s Director of Corporate Solutions, and Robert E. Bostrom, previously a lawyer at the Federal Reserve of New York who became a partner at Winston & Strawn, SNR Denton and Greenberg Traurig, and general counsel of NatWest Bancorp, Freddie Mac and, currently, Abercrombie & Fitch, discuss below the initiative and what it takes to be a Strategic-Asset GC. Their remarks have been edited for length and style.Continue Reading GC Outlook: Clear and Stormy: In a crisis, it’s easy to contribute. The challenge is when it’s calm.

By Aaron Fluss, FRONTEO

Aaron Fluss, the National Director of Managed Review for FRONTEO, talks about the value of creativity during document review and explains why, despite an explosion of data – and costs related to corralling all that data – technology can’t replace the human touch. His remarks have been edited for length and style.
Continue Reading How to Design Document Reviews To Cut Costs: It all starts with building the right workflow

By Charlie Platt, iDiscovery Solutions

A few weeks ago, I was lucky enough to meet with some senior in-house counsel from a Fortune 10 company. We were discussing data and the powerful ways analytics can be used in litigation. One of the attorneys appeared somewhat dismayed, saying that while analytics are amazing and she really wanted to make use of the technology, rarely did any of her cases contain anything other than emails and documents. One of her colleagues asked, “Aren’t you working on the <XYZ> matter?” She was. Her colleague replied, “I used to work in that division; have you considered the following?” and then proceeded to list about a dozen different data sources that were present – many of which were good candidates for analytics.Continue Reading The Ethical Hacker: Data, Disputes, Discovery and more…I Got 99 Problems, But No Data Ain’t One

By Metropolitan Corporate Counsel

The Association of Corporate Counsel’s 2016 Law Department Management Report has a bit of a good news-bad news flavor to it.

The good news is that law departments continue to gain “greater access to the inner sanctums where decisions are made,” as ACC puts it in its executive summary. The bad news is that their hard-won seat at the table derives, first and foremost, from the perception that a law department is cost-efficient.Continue Reading Backstory: Reconnect Redux

By Shamir Colloff, FRONTEO

When you are looking for a needle in a haystack, the addition of more hay does not alter your objective, only your approach. The same is true when searching for relevant information. Although we live in an era of exponentially increasing data volumes, the reality is that the material that matters most remains constant. This was true 10 years ago, when the FRCP changed to include electronically stored information as a codified information source, and it’s true today: Just because you have more documents doesn’t mean you have more relevant documents. Those with the tools to sort, compile, analyze and apply the details they gather, rather than simply review them, have a valuable competitive advantage.Continue Reading Distinguishing Data That Matters Most: Survey says: Users want easily accessible metrics

By Carolyn Casey, AccessData

Ninety-three percent of companies consider their general counsel a member of the executive management, up from 55 percent in 2010, according to Equilar’s General Counsel Pay Trends 2016. GCs have moved beyond solely advising on technical legal issues in large-scale organizations. GCs have long been at the table for strategic planning, compliance, risk management and cyber concerns. The more strategic influence of the chief legal officer is reflected in a median total direct compensation of $2.1 million at S&P 500 companies, per the Equilar 2016 study.Continue Reading Will 2017 Be the Year of the GC as Mega-Risk Officer?: As new threats loom, companies are more dependent than ever on the legal department’s risk oversight

By Bill Sowinski, David Moran, Wolters Kluwer ELM Solutions

Legal bill reviewers are specialists who can help in-house counsel keep a close eye on the bottom line without spending all day poring over detailed invoice line items. Below, two legal billing and technology veterans, David Moran and Bill Sowinski of ELM Solutions, discuss the obvious, and not so obvious, advantages of third-party legal bill review. Their remarks have been edited for length and style.Continue Reading It’s All About That Bill: Invoice review specialists explain why managing the bill improves relationships with providers