In this interview with Corporate Counsel Business Journal, Lilit Asadourian, co-chair of the insurance recovery and counseling practice at Barnes & Thornburg, discusses insurance coverage that in-house counsel should understand and shares best practices for your company’s insurance assets.
Michael Rynowecer, head honcho of BTI Consulting, interviews top legal decision makers on a regular basis.
In this piece from Corporate Counsel Business Journal, Dan Haley, general counsel and corporate secretary with Guild, which helps organizations bolster their talent pipelines by making education and career mobility accessible, discusses his career trajectory from legal and compliance to all people functions, including HR, learning and development.
Outside Counsel Guidelines (OCGS) are commonly used these days, but comprehensive and clear guidelines are hardly universal. In this piece from Corporate Counsel Business Journal, Brenda Hansen, a senior consultant with Epiq who has drafted many OCGs, offers useful advice for developing effective guidelines.
In this CCBJ interview, Olivera Medenica, a partner with Dunnington, Bartholow & Miller, discusses her decidedly non-traditional career path and approach to leadership.
In this interview with Corporate Counsel Business Journal, Alexandra Guajardo, Pricing & Analytics Officer at Shell, and Jared Applegate, Chief Legal Operations Officer with Barnes & Thornburg, discuss the challenges and opportunities inherent in legal technology solutions.
Continue Reading Drive Success with Process-Focused Decisions
“Overbill me once, shame on you. Overbill me twice, shame on me. Overbill me now – when I have a lot more work and a lot less budget – and it’s time for change,” writes David McVeigh, CEO of Axiom.
Continue Reading GCs Should Flex Muscles with Flexible Talent
In this piece from Corporate Counsel Business Journal, Todd Purdy, VP of Epiq, discusses “myth-busting” data points derived from his experience with e-discovery review teams in the U.S. and India. “When you approach a vendor for managed review of documents for litigation or an investigation, every single one will tell you they have the best people,” Purdy says. “But if everyone has the best people, how do you know what sets service providers apart for you, your firm or company, and your specific need?” From there he trots out four myth busters to use in evaluating a landscape populated by what are, by and large, temp workers:
During the pandemic, corporate law departments, forced to change, gathered, to varying degrees, forward thrust. “The most successful law departments will be those that leverage the momentum of the past two years to actively embrace transformative change, in how they integrate and operate both within their organization and in utilizing outside legal expertise,” says the recently released report from Thomson Reuters Institute, State of Corporate Law Departments, subtitled “law department performance in a post-pandemic world.” The report notes that law department priorities saw a subtle but important shift in emphasis. “While the enduring purpose of an organization’s legal function is to safeguard the business,” the report says, “a slightly higher number of respondents in our survey cited efficiency as a stronger priority for the department.” And that shift dictates the focus of this report on twin priorities – efficiency and effectiveness – that support the omnipresent function of safeguarding the business. The report, based on extensive benchmarking, reveals a consistent set of themes relevant for all law departments: rapidly evolving legal technology and digitization are trends that are happening now, and departments that lag behind risk perpetually playing catch-up; the need to focus on the right metrics to monitor performance
Continue Reading Efficiency Emerges as Top Law Department Priority
In the latest edition of Harvard Business Review, the leaders of McKinsey’s technology practice get down to the tricky but serious business of “separating real innovation from hot air.” That’s the difference between a big win and a costly flop. Klemens Hjartar, a senior McKinsey partner who co-chairs the tech practice globally, believes game-changers such as AI, 5G and cloud are hitting mass adoption tipping points. At the risk of missing the boat, he writes, corporate boards need to prioritize budgets for upgrading IT. “These aren’t the sexiest investments, but automating processes, investing in data foundations, cleaning up tech debt, and continually renewing the IT architecture are needed for the business to have a chance of taking full advantage of the new technologies coming online,” he writes. William Forrest, global lead for McKinsey’s cloud practice, sees this as a ripe time to make bold bets. “Right now,” he writes, “companies have a can’t-miss opportunity to ramp up their cloud ambitions: as tech companies limit head-count and eliminate programs, top talent — not just the bottom 20% performers —are coming on the job market, While many of them are being snapped up quickly, companies should think through how to move quickly
Continue Reading Whither Tech?