Helping Businesses Serve Corporate Legal Departments

FAQ's and Hints

Here are some tips to help you better reach and serve in-house counsel.

How are law departments organized?
Generally speaking, law departments are organized in a hierarchy, with a chief legal
executive on top, a series of direct reports, with staff attorneys, etc., reporting to the
middle managers. This is fundamentally different from law firms, which are
partnerships and inherently flat organizations.

What are the various roles within a corporate legal department?
A complicating factor in working with corporate legal departments is their lack of a
standardized nomenclature. Here are the various roles, with common titles:

		General Counsel – The top dog in a legal department. Almost all legal departments
		have exactly one general counsel, ultimately the entire legal department reports to him or her. (Even the rare legal department like General Electric which names the top lawyer in various divisions a general counsel, there is one general counsel above them all.) Very often the general counsel is also a vice president, and also very often the general counsel is the corporate secretary. A title such as Executive Vice President, General Counsel & Secretary is commonplace. Other titles sometimes used for the person in this role include: Chief Legal Officer; Vice President, Law; Chief Counsel; and at smaller companies, simply Counsel or Attorney.

		Associate General Counsel – The level of law department managers who report
		directly to the general counsel. These associate general counsel (please note that the plural of counsel is also counsel) are often responsible for a specific practice area, such as litigation or intellectual property. Sometimes they are responsible for particular business lines–a bank may have an associate general counsel for retail banking and one for investment banking. At larger law departments, there are often several layers. Other titles often used for people on this level: Assistant General Counsel; Deputy General Counsel; and Senior Counsel.

		Staff Counsel – The level of corporate counsel with little or no management
		responsibility. Other similar titles include: Corporate Counsel, Attorney, and Staff Attorney.

		Corporate Counsel – Any attorney who works in a legal department, including the
		general counsel and all others above, is a corporate counsel, whatever their role or title. Other common terms are in-house counsel and house counsel.

		Law Department Administrator – a non-attorney administrator who manages a legal
		department. Only some law departments have such a person, although it’s a growing trend. Like everyone in legal departments, the law department administrator's power varies widely from department to department. Other titles include: Law Department Manager, Chief of Operations, Chief Operating Officer, Operations Manager, Head of Administration.

What’s important to general counsel?
When asked, general counsel will say they are always looking for ways to reduce cost
and increase efficiency, and they mean it. But the most important topic to general
counsel, the thing that keeps them awake at night, is RISK. It is the role of the
corporate counsel to evaluate and mitigate the company’s risk. Efficiency and cost are
only factors within an acceptable risk environment.

What’s “convergence?” What’s “partnering?”
A typical large law department may simultaneously use hundreds or even thousands
of law firms. Often, when leaders of the law department believe the number has
become unwieldy, and the process inefficient, they will go through a process to
actively limit the number of firms on their approved list. This process, pioneered in the
early 1990s by DuPont, is called “convergence.” Often, the law department will extract
concessions from the remaining law firms and service providers, the most common of
which is the promise to act like a partner with the corporate law department.

Who in a corporate legal department selects law firms?
It could be anyone. At a large law department, it’s generally not the general counsel
except in bet-the-company matters. Generally, corporate counsel, especially
associate general counsel, are empowered to make such decision for their areas of
responsibility.

Who in a corporate legal department buys technology?
Most law departments have somebody with the responsibility of championing new
technology initiatives. While there used to be little rhyme or reason to the process, it
is becoming more organized, especially at law departments with administrators.
Otherwise, it’s likely an associate general counsel who likes technology, or who has a
computer science degree, or is otherwise an early-adopter. In any event, the law
department usually works closely with IT on any technology initiative.

What are some other good resources?
The Association of Corporate Counsel is the leading professional organization of in-
house counsel. The Minority Corporate Counsel Association site is also quite useful.

The major independent magazines for in-house counsel are InsideCounsel and the
American Lawyer’s Corporate Counsel magazine. The InsideCounsel site has some
particularly useful surveys. Inside Litigation is a magazine specifically for chief in-
house litigators.

Other useful surveys include Hildebrandt's Annual U.S. Law Department Survey, the
Top of Mind [pdf] survey by the law firm of Kirkpatrick & Lockhart and Fulbright &
Jaworski's Annual Litigation Trends survey.

Rees Morrison's Law Department Management blog is often excellent, and a very
good book on the relationship between inside and outside counsel is Larry Smith’s
Inside/Outside.