RunningLean
Law departments are making it work in today’s economy.
t first, a recession is a crisis, an acute challenge that must be met head on.
But after a year or two, it just becomes a way of life. Everyone’s affected. No
one is spared the financial pressure and budgetary constraints. The ques-
tion then becomes how you manage over the long term, adjusting goals
and expectations to maximize efficiency and reduce cost without
surrendering quality of service.
These days all law departments are running lean, trying to find their
own solutions to the universal problem of doing more with less. But
no two companies are alike—the recession has hit industries in various ways, to
varying degrees. So this month, InsideCounsel reaches out to companies across
the spectrum—aerospace, telecom, retail, health care—to see just how they are
responding to the limitations and opportunities of the recession.
Their experiences show that while a tight economy is no walk in the park,
it’s not tragic either. Difficult as a recession can be, it’s part of a cycle; it can be
a balancing force. In some ways it actually makes an in-house counsel’s job
easier, more interesting and more rewarding.
A
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Running Lean
Best Buy • Insourcing
One really good attorney
essentially takes the place of three outside counsel.
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