Re-caps of Sessions

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I had the good fortune of presenting to our members at the 2010 ILN Regional Meeting of the Americas on Social Networking and why it may matter to our attorneys.  I began by taking an informal poll of the room to see how many in the audience were regularly using social networking sites (I clarified that by "regularly," I meant logging in once a week and connecting with someone in their network in some way).  It was a fairly small number – about 15-20% of the audience.

Though social networking is a hot topic, there are still many attorneys who question how it can be useful to them in business development at all, so I gave them a few reasons why, starting with American Lawyer Media, Zeughauser Group & Greentarget’s recent survey of in-house counsel.  I mentioned two important points for them that came out of the survey:

  • Blogs are an increasingly preferred mechanism for obtaining business and legal related industry information.
  • Corporate counsel are getting more of their business and legal related industry information online than from traditional print sources.

I also mentioned that the survey showed that in-house counsel are using blogs, Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook to get their information and judge law firms.Continue Reading ILN Conference Re-Cap: Social Networking – Why it May Matter to You

On the first morning of our 2010 ILN Regional Meeting of the Americas in Houston, we had a fascinating presentation from Beirne Maynard & Parsons’ Brit Brown and Ben Escobar on "Deepwater Gulf Oil Spill – An Energy Update." 

A Little Oil History…

Brown started by saying that it used to be incredibly easy to find oil in Texas – it would just bubble up.  The first oil well was actually the Drake Oil Well in Pennsylvania and it produced about 400 barrels a day.  About the same time, they figured out how to distill oil into kerosene, and that became the cheap alternative to well oil.

The well oil industry started to boom, and the first gusher was Spindletop, which started on January 10, 1901.  Brown said that it was a phenomenal gusher by any standards, taking nine days to control. It only went to 1,100 feet, which is a relatively shallow well by today’s standards.

Spindletop was outside of Beaumont, Texas and produced, during the gushing stage, about 100,000 barrels of oil a day.  To compare, Brown said that the government estimate for the Macondo well was a high of 63,000 barrels a day when it was gushing into the Gulf.

Brown said when that well came through, they started drilling "like it was going out of style," and within a year, they had about 300 producing wells.  This started to go down after a time, but in 1927, it hit peak production.  The field had a peak production of 21 million barrels a year, which was incredible for this period. 

However, things have changed. Brown said that in Texas, the railroad commission used to be like OPEC.  Even in the 50’s and 60’s, the railroad commission controlled all of the oil and gas production in the state of Texas.  They acted like OPEC and could actually control price.  They started to lose that edge going into the 1970’s, when the US hit peak production.  Ever since, production has been going down.

Where Are We Now?

Brown said that the greatest oil production (based on barrels of proven reserves) is in the Middle East, followed by South and Central America, Europe and Eurasia.  The US proven reserves is right about 28 billion barrels, which is not a lot when you consider that the US consumes about seven billion barrels of oil each year and was once the largest producers of oil in the world.  

Brown compared US consumption of oil (7 billion barrels a year) to production, which is about 2.6 billion.  He said that oil provides about 90% of our motor fuel, and 40% for total power.  He commented that the demand for oil has increased, resulting in the US having to import 75% of its oil and added that at the current rate of consumption, it would take the world 45.7 years, approximately, to exhaust the world’s current proven reserves.  Continue Reading ILN Conference Re-Cap: Deepwater Gulf Oil Spill – An Energy Update

One of our sessions during the ILN’s 2010 Regional Meeting of the Americas in Houston focused on the always popular topic of law firm management.  The panel was moderated by our Chairman, Peter Altieri of Epstein Becker & Green in New York.  On the panel were Steve Arthur of Harrison & Moberly in Indianapolis, Indiana, Carlos Rodriguez-Vidal of Goldman Antonetti & Cordova in San Juan, Puerto Rico, Doug Winthrop of Howard Rice in San Francisco, California, Bill O’Neill from McDonald Hopkins in Cleveland, Ohio and Anders Lundberg from Hellstrom in Stockholm, Sweden.

Creating Demand

Altieri began by saying that one of the challenges in the current economy for firms is creating demand. In the past, they had much more pipeline work than there is now, in part because clients are trying to do more in-house. He added that even the big firms are coming in and being price-competitive, and asked the panelists to comment on this.

Winthrop said that his firm has been seeing a tremendous rebound in the litigation sector of the firm, which has them quite busy.  Now, they’re facing the issue of whether to hire more attorneys on the litigation side, or ask the business lawyers to chip in.  He said they’re concerned that they’ll find themselves with overcapacity, so they’ve addressed the issue by doing both.Continue Reading ILN Conference Re-Cap: Law Firm Management Panel

During the ILN’s 2010 Regional Meeting of the Americas in Houston, Texas last week, we were treated to a presentation by our host firm’s managing partner, Martin Beirne of Beirne Maynard & Parsons, and Jeff Carr, Senior Vice President, General Counsel, and Secretary of FMC Technologies.  Jeff’s presentation focused on "Getting Out of the Box in Counsel Engagement and Service Delivery – the Value Challenge." 

Beirne introduced Carr, saying that he’s the author of the Associate of Corporate Counsel’s Value Challenge – something that he’s been talking about for fifteen years.  Carr said that FMC Technologies is a 9 year old company, with about 120 years of history, and is one of those that touches people’s lives in many ways.  

Carr jumped right into talking about his experience as a general counsel, saying that his legal spend is less today than it was in 2001, in a world where firms’ rates go up 10% a year.  He added that FMC Technologies pays, on average, 107% of their invoices to law firms – he would later explain how and why this happens.

How is it possible to have a smaller legal spend? Carr said companies need to change how they buy what they buy, how they pay for it, and go from being reactive lawyers to being proactive lawyers.  What drives him? If he can save his company $1 million, that equates to a half a cent of share earnings.  That’s what drives companies.

He said that his legal team’s mission statement says that they’re not lawyers – they’re there to help achieve business goals.  Only one person who is currently on his team was with him in 2001 because the others either didn’t want to move when they changed their headquarters to Houston, or they didn’t want to practice law the way that his team does.  They were not willing to embrace change and the discipline that they require to be successful lawyers at FMC Technologies.Continue Reading ILN Conference Re-Cap: Getting Out of the Box in Counsel Engagement and Service Delivery – the Value Challenge

After lunch, ALM’s Social Media: Risks & Rewards conference focused more on the rewards of social media.  The Brand Protection and Promotion of Social Media session featured Jennifer Arkowitz from Townsend and Townsend and Crew as the moderator, and David Morris, Senior Corporate Counsel of TripAdvisor, Alexandra Sepulveda, Trademark Counsel with General Mills, and Johanna Sistek, Trademark Counsel for Google, Inc. as speakers.  

Proactive or Reactive? 

Arkowitz’s first question was whether each of the companies were more proactive or reactive in their social media efforts.

Sepulveda (General Mills) said that for them, it’s a combination. When Facebook had a big land grab for user names, they went through their brand list and got all of those names.  She said that as trademark lawyers, they’re classic hostages, because if they know about something, they have to do something about it.  

Sistek (Google) said that they have issues raised internally from employees as well as users, so they’re able to be reactive instead of proactive. She added that all of their teams use social media in what they do.

Morris (TripAdvisor) commented that they’re both proactive and reactive. Being an online brand is core to what they do, so although they don’t have a dedicated social media team, about half the company is working on social media. They do that internally and externally. TripAdvisor uses small firms to scour the net for mentions of their company – this is at a cost, but it does help to find those mentions.Continue Reading Conference Re-cap: ALM’s Social Media; Risks and Rewards Brand Protection and Promotion and Social Media

Yesterday, part I discussed the Chinese and Hong Kong perspectives on the global financial crisis and its effect on their business. Part II will talk about the Vietnamese perspective and the justice systems in China and Vietnam.

Peter asked Phan Nguyen Toan from LEADCO what he was seeing in Vietnam, saying that a number of US companies are looking to Vietnam as an alternative for production and manufacturing. Phan agreed that Vietnam is similar to China, in that they didn’t suffer much from the economic downturn. He cited their recent entry into the international community as one reason for this. He said they are struggling in some ways, saying that a company recently opened a big factory, where they were planning to recruit 10,000 workers. After two years, they had only been able to hire twenty percent of the qualified workers. He added that they were also facing additional issues of poor infrastructure, particularly the seaport, airport, and transportation systems. 

However, Phan noted that they have some distinct advantages in Vietnam as well, such as the lower costs for good resources. Secondly, he said that the Vietnamese people tend to be very hardworking and eager to learn. The country is rich in natural resources. Phan added that the population of Vietnam is very young, with about 50% being under 35.Continue Reading How Has the 2009 World Economic Downturn Affected the Asia Pacific Region? A Re-cap from 2010 Annual Meeting (Part II)

In addition to our regular Annual Meeting, we also had a special session for our Asia Pacific delegates to discuss the strengths of the firms in the region, recent cases they had been handling, and the interesting and important question of "How has the 2009 world economic downturn affected the Asia Pacific Region?" This question prompted a discussion of the current marketplace that may be of greater value than just to the attendees.

Scott Guan from Jade & Fountain in Shanghai kicked off the discussion with an update from China, saying that they hadn’t been hit as hard by the global financial crisis as some of the other markets. The effects that they’d seen were mostly in the areas of cross-border work, as well as foreign-related financing, M&A, and capital markets work. He’d seen a greater impact of the crisis on multinational law firms in China, who have had to lay off a lot of lawyers.  

But this has turned out to be an opportunity for a local law firm with international expertise, such as Jade & Fountain.  The firm was recently ranked as one of the top 10 fastest growing Chinese firms by the Asian Legal Business journal. Scott said that because there are so many qualified lawyers on the market from these multinational firms, who his firm wouldn’t have had access to in a more prosperous economic situation, they have been able to actively recruit these attorneys. Because of the firm’s well-designed partner incubation system, the firm has brought in attorneys from Allen & Overy, Freshfields, Allens Arthur Robinson, Baker & McKenzie and Jones Day.Continue Reading How Has the 2009 World Economic Downturn Affected the Asia Pacific Region? A Re-cap from 2010 Annual Meeting (Part I)

On Saturday, we had another session that was of interest to the delegates – a presentation on Effective Benefit Programs. The presenter was Stanley Jeremiah, the Vice President and Managing Director for Asia Pacific HR Management at Convergys.  Stanley is also a chartered insurer with UK professional qualification, a fellow of the Chartered Insurance Institute, and a council member of the Singapore Insurance Institute.  His talk focused on one small area of firm management, benefits, and he gave a general overview since benefits are country-specific.  

One of the characteristics of a benefits program is that it’s a more subtle form of compensation than remuneration, because it’s not often communicated to employees in terms of cost.  As a result, it’s less comparable to benefits packages at other firms and isn’t well-leveraged as a differentiating factor when recruiting talent.  Because benefits aren’t given this importance, employees often don’t know what benefits they have and as a result, are not as appreciative as they could be, because they don’t understand the value.  Stanley said that if firms can use benefits packages effectively, they could become something that has a higher perceived value than the actual cost.  Continue Reading Effective Benefits Programs – an ILN Conference Re-cap

Although generally I would make every effort to offer posts from our ILN conferences as they happen, in this case I am forced to write them after the fact.  Because of the political turmoil in Bangkok, we had to make the decision four weeks before our Annual Meeting to move the conference to Singapore, so I was knee deep in last minute decisions and more on-site planning and execution as a result than is normally the case.  So without further ado, I bring you some of the highlights from the ILN’s 22nd Annual Meeting in Singapore! 

In the first days of our visit, we had the pleasure of visiting Maxwell Chambers, the home of the Singapore International Arbitration Centre, where we met their head of business development, Ms. Rachel Foxton, and their CEO, Mr. Ming Naing Oo.  We saw several of their hearing rooms and learned more about the benefits of arbitration in Singapore during our Saturday morning session.  Continue Reading SIAC – Arbitration in Singapore, an ILN Conference Re-Cap

On Wednesday, May 12th, I was fortunate enough to attend a couple of sessions at American Lawyer Media’s Law Firm Marketing and Business Development Leadership Forum. The ILN was a marketing partner for the event, and I spoke on a panel called "Going, Going…Global? The Worldwide Marketing for Legal Services." Unfortunately, I have not yet mastered the art of tweeting from a panel I’m participating in (and so don’t have comprehensive notes for a re-cap), but the first session of the morning on the changing nature of in-house and outside counsel relationships was full of great takeaways for law firms and their marketing departments.  If you’re interested in the full list of tweets from the conference, you can check out the #LCMO hashtag transcript.

On the panel were:

Continue Reading Re-cap of ALM’s Law Firm CMO Forum: Inside/Outside Counsel Relationship