Burnout among the general workforce—and lawyers especially—might have passed the point of no return. In a recent poll conducted by Monster, 95% of American workers stated they are thinking about finding new jobs, implying a general sense of burnout in the workforce. With the reports from Thomson Reuters suggesting that a substantial majority of in-house… Read More »
A lot can change in 30 years. The world went from carbon paper copies (what a mess!) to electronic contracts, reems and boxes of paper documents to mobile eDiscovery apps (the world of litigation in the palm of your hand), lots of support staff to more self-sufficient attorneys. For three decades, Assigned Counsel has watched,… Read More »
Long hours, exhausting caseloads, eroding personal boundaries, and high workplace burnout. Many corporate attorneys cite these and other stress-inducing factors as their reasons for leaving law firm environments for in-house life. Now studies show that their assumptions about pressure within corporate law departments, especially in the wake of COVID-19, don’t mesh with their lived experience.… Read More »
The initial shock of the pandemic caused plenty of law firms and corporate law departments to make tough decisions about their budgets. Some resorted to furloughs and pay cuts as a way of stemming costs. Others examined strategies like reducing real-estate expenses or hiring temporary attorneys to make every dollar count. Eventually, conditions stabilized, but… Read More »
When the world shifted from commercial work spaces to home offices, most in the legal industry didn’t expect changes to last more than several months. Yet here we are today, with 76% of U.S. attorneys working from home at least one day per week, and what most imagined to be a brief detour turning into… Read More »
“When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.” Powerful in their time, Viktor Frankl’s words take on a renewed significance in the COVID-19 era. Rather than wallowing in the challenges of a trying year, business leaders embraced the opportunities the pandemic provided and evolved with new trends.… Read More »
The year 2020 has been called “the most interesting budgeting season in years” by Law.com, and we at Assigned Counsel® would have to agree with them. Budgetary priorities have been jumbled and reshuffled in ways few would have expected at the beginning of the year, when COVID-19 and social distancing weren’t part of our collective… Read More »
Discounted law firm rates could go a long way to reducing pressure on corporate law department budgets, but Altman Weil’s 2019 Chief Legal Officer Survey finds that asking for rate reductions is a sticky subject. In fact, 33% of CLOs say they avoid this line of questioning to avoid prejudicing their outside law firm relationship… Read More »
At the heart of every effective corporate law department is a commitment to collaboration. The shared expectation that in-house attorneys “do more with less” can unite the team, encouraging internal staff to share their knowledge and lend a hand when their bandwidth permits. Yet even with total in-house cooperation, there will still be situations where… Read More »
The American Bar Association (ABA) finds that within the entire legal profession only 15% of attorneys identify as racial or ethnic minorities and only 36% identify as women. The lack of existing diversity in the field makes it even harder for corporate law departments to cultivate varied backgrounds and perspectives within their organization. Consulting firm… Read More »