I Twitter infrequently although I see steadily increasing traffic here from Twitter. When people retweet one of my items or write their own with a link, readers click through. Today I noticed that my tweets are on three “lists.” Here is the information about them.
@IntegreonEDD/legal following 56 Twitter members and followed by 7; @DukeLukeM/legal-it-top following 27; and @jkubicki/legal-transformation following 13.
Someone in a legal department could set up a list or follow a list and let that serve as a partial filter for the outpouring of messages (See my post of April 28, 2009: Twitter and 6 references.).
The band Radiohead lets fans download its music and pay whatever they wish – including nothing. Janet Moore janet@globalRainmaking.com mentions this method of pricing services in Strategies: J. of Legal Marketing, Vol. 11, Oct. 2009 at 10, and I played the tune in my head for a bit.
Some path-breaking, gutsy law firm may try this on a law department: “Pay us whatever you think the past month’s services were worth.” That loud approach would certainly force the supervising in-house attorney to listen to his conscience about what the month’s toil was worth. Surely, a Radiohead hit!
What do you think of this sentence in an article about alternative fee arrangements on the international scene? “[O]ne large European multinational paid a lump sum in exchange for three things: first, a hotline service from the multinational’s legal department to the firm; second, strategic support through brainstorming and planning; and third, handling commercial litigation involving less than a certain amount.” The quote comes from Strategies: J. of Legal Marketing, Vol. 11, Oct. 2009 at 8.
I suppose the hotline means some priority access to the firm’s leading lights. Not red phones on mahogany desks, but a commitment by the firm to answer or get back right away. The “strategic support” leaves me mystified, but intrigued. My guess is that the firm committed to helping the general counsel think through some internal management questions or remove some big-picture legal thorns.
Readers who add me to their RSS feed are near and dear to me. One or two do a day and it cheers me up. “Now, there’s someone,” I say to myself, “who has a discriminating eye for blog quality!”
During the first 11 days of November, FeedBurner reports that this blog had an average of Subscribers 620; Reach 124; Raw Hits 4,343; Clickthroughs 278; and Impressions 941. It estimated 642 subscribers on November 11th, the most this blog has ever had and then 685 the next day. Four months earlier there were 69 fewer average Subscribers, and half as many “Raw hits” (See my post of July 19, 2009: Feedburner statistics with 7 references.).
Google Feedfetcher with 512 subscribers and Bloglines with 102 dominated the large number of feed readers and aggregators. MyBlogLog also tells me that from Nov. 5 to Nov. 11, the sixth most common click by visitors was on the “Subscribe to Rees’s Blog” button (4 clicks in total).
During the previous 30 days up to November 10th, FeedBurner tells me “Total Item Use,” which is Views plus Clickthroughs, reached 2,500. During that period there were 26,147 views of 531 items as well as 7,349 clicks back to my blog on 501 items.
Since February 2007 when I signed up for Site Meter, there have been 208,685 visitors and 375,111 pageviews. That means during those 31 months, this blog averaged 6,700 visits and 12,000 page views (See my post of Feb. 20, 2007: Site Meter metrics; July 24, 2009: analysis of Site Meter as to visitors’ ISP addresses; and Aug. 19, 2009 #1: international visitors.). A trendline of visits projects next month there will be 11,000 so interest in this blog has grown steadily.
MyBlogLog gives some different statistics. For example, on Monday, November 10th, it tells me the blog had 75 offsite clicks, 731 views, and 363 readers (See my post of Feb. 16, 2008: 35 offsite clicks and 144 readers.).
Only eight people have taken the moment or two to complete my poll, to the right, about the most useful benchmark metrics for their legal department. Do it now; don’t read the answer below!
Seven of the eight respondents (87.5%) chose “total legal spend as a percentage of revenue.” Four chose “inside-to-outside spend ratio; ” three “lawyers per billion of revenue;” and one chose “external legal spend per lawyer.” Remember, everyone could choose two out of the list of six. No one picked as their two most useful “internal spend per lawyer” or “total legal spend per 1,000 employees.”
This post continues my series of 53 thanks. I appreciate it when other blogs or websites cite one of my posts or include me on their blog roll. In the past three months I ran across another 17 (See my post of June 17, 2009: 14 blogs/websites that have directed readers here; June 26, 2009: 13 more referral sources; July 10, 2009: 13 more referral sites; July 19, 2009: another baker’s dozen; and Aug. 21, 2009: fifth set of a baker’s dozen.).
- axiomlaw.com/
- blog.earlycase.com/ (Tom Stack@earlycase.com)
- blog.exari.com (Adine Deford)
- blog.simplejustice.us/ (Scott H. Greenfield, Esq.)
- business-lawyer.biz (Justia)
- contingentfeeblog.com/ (mcclanahan ● myers ● espey, llp)
- delawareediscovery.com (Christopher Spizzirri)
- institutionalpartners.com
- litigationfunds.blogspot.com/
- weagree.com (Willem Wiggers)
- patenttrolls3.blogspot.com
- practicesmarter.com/ (Judd Kessler, Esq.)
- unitedlex.com/unitedlex-news/
- lpowatch.blogspot.com (Jagriti Mishra)
- counseltocounsel.com/ (Stephen Seckler, Esq.)
- 123lpo.com/
- 21stcenturylaw.wordpress.com/ (Nicole Black)
Huzzah!!!! This is my 5,000th post, just as I leave for a week’s vacation in London.
During the 55 months since this blog began late in February 2005, an average of three posts a day have appeared. The total number of words amounts to a bit less than 1.1 million (See my post of Nov. 10, 2009 #3: concordance analysis of nearly 5,000 posts; and Sept. 1, 2008: three-quarters of a million words and some other metrics.). All those words in those 5,000 posts (as of Nov. 13, 2009) group into thirteen primary categories:
Outside Counsel 22%; Talent 13%; Tools 12%; Productivity 9%; Controlling Costs 9%; Observations 8%; Benchmarks 5%; Structure 5%; Showing Value 4%; Client Satisfaction; 3%; Thinking 3%; Technology 3%; and Knowledge Mgt. 2%. The remainder I categorized as Guest, Writing, or This Blog (See my post of June 23, 2009: thoughts on first 4,500 posts’ categories; Sept. 22, 2005: thoughts on my categories; March 4, 2007: visits to blog by category; Jan. 13, 2008: categories by interest of readers; and Sept. 1, 2008: insights into categories on this blog.).
As for metaposts, which collect at least six posts on a topic, I have published under Observations a total of 413, which collectively refer back to 5,710 posts and 181 metaposts (See my post of Jan. 18, 2008 #2: more than 3,500 references; and Aug. 12, 2008: metrics on metaposts.). The leading topics of this collection of collections are Outside Counsel 22%;Talent 18%; Productivity 11%; Cost 9%; Structure 6%; Metrics 6%; Management 5%; Software 4%; Knowledge Management 3%; Client 3%; Decisions 3%; Technology 2%; Tools 2%; Work 3%; Showing Value 1%; and This Blog 1%. Eighteen of those metaposts rise to the status of hyperpost since they include five or more metaposts.
If you visit the website of Mitratech, one of the leading providers of software for legal departments, you may notice the coterie of consultants who have been trained on how to help develop, plan and implement the TeamConnect software. Nine are listed.
Computer Generated Services (CGS)
When general counsel decide to license and install complicated systems like those to track matter information, they should look for experienced support in addition to that provided by the vendor (See my post of Jan. 1, 2008: consultants with 15 references.).
“A particular bugbear of mine is the application of financial metrics to nonfinancial activities. Anxious to justify themselves rather than be outsourced, many service functions (such as IT, HR, and legal) try to devise a return on investment number to help their cause. Indeed, ROI is often described as the holy grail of measurement -- a revealing metaphor, with its implication of an almost certainly doomed search." This view comes from the Harvard Bus. Rev., Vol. 86, Oct. 2009 at 99-100, as part of an article about performance measurement.
Often have I written about the slipperiness of calculating a return on investment for specific programs, but never about the ROI for the legal function as a whole (See my post of Oct. 22, 2008: ROI with 17 references.).
A fortiori, if individual initiatives can’t support an ROI calculation, neither can the entire department.
I wrote once about general counsel and the significant percentage of time scheduled for them by others, time that is not in their control (See my post of Sept. 8, 2008: you need a good administrative assistant to manage your calendar.). Cheryl Solomon, general counsel of the Gucci Group spoke with me recently about that point.
“My time is scheduled for me but often I control when things happen even if not the fact that they must happen. My schedule gets filled up, but often, I generate the need for the meeting or call.” She also agreed that her assistant definitely manages her calendar. “It’s been a disaster when I occasionally try to manage it myself.”
At the end, pressured by me, Solomon estimated that “maybe 20-25 percent of my time is committed by others without much or any say by me.”
Sixth set of blogs that have referred visitors to Law Department Management Blog
5,000 posts (!), a million+ words (!!), and 55 months (!!!) on this blog
The holy grail, ineffable and unattainable, of an ROI calculation for an entire legal department
Clarification on the amount of time at work that general counsel are committed by others
If we can’t nail down historical “facts,” we can’t presume to convey best practices
A framework for improved decisions
Criticism of the reporting lines of Bank of America’s beleaguered general counsel
A prompt-acceptance advantage to be on a panel, but quite a drubbing on fees!
