With technology, a legal department can speak with a single voice, think with a single mind, and act like a partnership even with lawyers dispersed around the world. Consultant Rees W. Morrison discusses 20 techniques that increase coherence and effectiveness in a spread-out department.

[via 20 Ways to Link Dispersed Legal Departments.]

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About a dozen major corporations, including Prudential Financial, DuPont and Microsoft, pledged Thursday to spend $30 million in 2010 on minority- and women-owned law firms as part of a new commitment called the Inclusion Initiative. In-house lawyers at DuPont and Prudential hatched the idea and recruited in-house lawyers at other companies to build a larger coalition, says Prudential GC Susan Blount. Other companies in the coalition include American Airlines, Accenture, Comcast and General Mills.

[via Small Firm Business - Major Companies Pledge $30 Million to Minority- and Women-Owned Law Firms.]

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Over the course of two days, InsideCounsel magazine comes to life through more than 20 highly interactive sessions providing the corporate legal community with insights and ideas from some of the sharpest minds in law, including keynote speakers Ted Olson, Ford’s David Leitch, Procter & Gamble’s Deborah Platt Majoras, and Allstate Insurance Company’s Michele Coleman Mayes. Utilizing a world-class advisory board and the stellar editorial staff of InsideCounsel magazine, the 10th Annual SuperConference will provide you with strategic tools and practical, innovative solutions to many of the major issues facing your legal department.

Program Highlights

» Fight back against IP theft
» Learn innovative ways to defeat plaintiffs’ damages
» Demonstrate your law department’s value and build influence
» Get the best alternative fee arrangement that’s right for you
» Navigate white collar criminal investigations and prosecution
» The role of the general counsel as counselor
» Earn up to 12 CLE credits

Learn more and register today!

* InsideCounsel is an InhouseBlog.com advertiser.

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In-housers of New York, this new Meetup group is for you:

Although professional networking opportunities for attorneys abound, few are geared specifically toward in-house counsel. The purpose of this group is to help change that by facilitating discussion and networking among New York area in-house lawyers. The group will enable us to share ideas, experiences, questions, anecdotes and even the occassional joke or random thought both online and in person. The group is open to area in-house attorneys and other practicing attorneys who were, at one time, in-house.

Did we forget to mention drinks? Their kick-off event is cocktails in Midtown on March 24th (place TBD). Head over and sign up today.

[via New York In-House Counsel (New York, NY) - Meetup.com.]

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More chief legal officers plan to beef up their legal departments this year, according to the results of the Association of Corporate Counsel’s 10th Annual Chief Legal Officer Survey. But it’s not a sign that the economy is recovering and budgets constraints are easing, according to ACC deputy general counsel James Merklinger. The survey shows companies are shifting work from outside counsel to in-house, while boosting spending on alternative fee arrangements.

[via Law.com - New Survey Suggests In-House Lawyers Are Poised to Hire.]

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Congrats go out to Rees Morrison as his excellent Law Department Management Blog reaches new milestones. If you haven’t visited his blog, head over today to see what you’ve been missing.

[via Law Department Management: Five years; five thousand posts; five hundred thousand page views – High Fives!!]

The next thing you know, they’ll have acid-washed “jorts” dominating their 2010 Spring line-up:

How low can you go? Levi Strauss has asked that not just about its jeans, but about its outside counsel — slashing the number of law firms that it uses down to just two — one of the most sweeping reductions yet by a large company.

[via Sportin' Some Skimpy Cut-Off Jeans: Levi's Slashes Its Outside Counsel.]

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General counsel for high-risk companies who stay up at night worrying about bribery could take a page from Jay Dalton’s playbook. The now-retired general counsel of Panama-based Willbros Group Inc., an international oil and gas pipeline company, not only helped find employees who were bribing foreign government officials to win contracts, he also stopped them from doing it, according to federal court documents.

Law.com – General Counsel Smashes Bribery Ring at Own Company

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Your next in-house counsel job interview may be by video link – so there are a few things you need to keep in mind to ensure you are at top of your interviewing game:

Videoconference interviews are becoming more common as law firms and corporations expand geographically, and as travel becomes more expensive and time-consuming. Increasingly, law firms are organized by practice or industry groups, with matters being staffed with lawyers from offices around the globe. Therefore, candidates may need to interview with practitioners in other states or countries with whom they will be working if hired. And, especially in this down economy, prospective employers are cutting costs, so many may utilize their on-site videoconferencing capabilities rather than fly interviewers or candidates to meetings in far-flung offices.

[via lawjobs.com Career Center - Interview Strategies: Get Ready for Your Video Close-Up.]

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Will law firms get as fired up about being ranked by U.S. News as law schools do? Our guess is yes – and journalists everywhere are already salivating at the prospect:

Last summer, we reacted with elation when we learned that U.S. News & World Report would soon be ranking the law firms. It seems to us that it’s going to be one huge nightmare for the firms themselves — especially those poor marketing folks who will invariably be besieged with calls from clueless partners demanding to know why their firms weren’t ranked higher.

But for us journo types, such rankings are manna from heaven.

In any event, the intrigue over the rankings is building. The ABA on Monday announced that it was going to take a good hard look at the magazine’s methods. According to this story in the National Law Journal, the resolution was prompted by U.S. News’s plan, but that the inquiry will look at a range of lawyer and law-firm rankings.

[via U.S. News Will Rank Firms; But Not Before the ABA Asks Questions - Law Blog - WSJ.]

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