As any in house counsel knows, in house attorneys are a widely diverse group. You have to wear multiple hats, know different areas of law, and finally, be able to juggle multiple unrelated projects.

But the real question is: Do you know the profile of the average in house legal department?

Results from Hildebrandt's 2009 Law Department Survey shed light on the make-up of in house legal departments, and on the demographics of the lawyers working in them.

Here are some of the survey's key findings:

Companies want to be seen and heard in multimedia.  And while that may inspire corporate Twitter and Facebook accounts, they may have questions regarding liability implications of social media.  And that's where you come in, esteemed corporate counsel.  How do you advise your organization or company on creating a social media policy?

Here are some questions to help frame your discussion with the execs:

Is a written social media policy necessary? 

Would a policy be in response to an incident or questionable use of social media, or is it forward-looking, aimed to outline best practices for social media usage in a company setting or for employees.  You should consider how social media has been used in the past and the specific types of uses that could pose concern for the company.   Even if there is no immediate concern, it may still be useful to draft a simple plan to guide online engagement.

10-K, 10-Q, 8-K, S-1.  Nope, not some new fad of alpha-numeric soup. They are SEC forms typically involved in securities filings.  And if you are iffy on these forms or on recent developments in disclosure obligations and new SEC rules, then it may be just the time to seek a little CLE support in these areas.

And if you or other members of your legal department find yourself ready to sign up for a tutorial on SEC filings, you are in luck. The Practicing Law Institute (PLI) has been hosting live seminars on the subject.  The Chicago seminar took place last week at the University of Chicago and the next live session will take place in San Francisco on November 12-13, 2009.

The topics covered in PLI's "Securities Filings 2009" include:

The Association of Corporate Counsel (ACC) and Serengeti Law released their 8th Annual "Managing Outside Counsel" survey last month, revealing some interesting trends in the inside-outside counsel relationship. 

According to their findings, over the past 8 years in-house counsel have been more demanding of their outside counsel.  The study suggests that in-house has taken on the role of manager to outside counsel to heart and has opted for a variety of measures to ensure competitive productivity.  It shows that while the median spending in-house is at one of the highest levels in eight years, median spending on outside counsel is at its lowest level.  

How in-house counsel is expecting more from outside counsel:

Letting go is hard to do.  And in an economy like the current one, layoffs have become a necessary evil--and even norm--for some companies.  Being the recipient of bad news can be devastating, but being the messenger carries its own exacting toll.  Companies are turning to in-house counsel to guide their executive and HR teams on how to conduct workforce reductions judiciously, expeditiously...and in accordance with state and federal law.

Read below on tips of how your legal department can effectively guide the company with workforce reduction and how to take preemptive steps to limit liability in the process.

The question of how many attorneys is the right number is not only age-old in corporate counsel circles but has proven to be a hot topic of debate.  Too few and in-house counsel becomes heavily dependent on outside counsel for big and small matters.  Too many attorneys on a legal team and it may compromise efficiencies for the company's bottom line and create the issue of too many cooks in the kitchen.  In a time when economic factors have drained company coffers and strained legal departments to do more with less, re-assessing a company's needs can prove to be vital.  And can yield surprising results.

So, how should General Counsel and corporate executives evaluate their legal needs and determine a "Goldilocks" strategy for tailoring a legal department that's just the right size?  Here are a few tips compiled from podcasts, articles, blog posts, and online media (as listed in the "Related Resources"):

Unless you are finishing up a two-year corporate counsel stint at a remote company in rural Antarctica, you are probably pretty well-versed in the language of the recession that has taken hold of news headlines, board-room meetings, and dinner-table conversations.  Scaling back, laying off, flat-fee billing, in-house eDiscovery ---these have been the recent buzz words in legal departments across nation.

Well, now there are a few numbers to back up the in-house recessionary fodder.  Hildebrandt International has released its annual Hildebrandt Law Department Survey, which provides benchmarking data for U.S. and global law departments. 

http://technology.findlaw.com/video/records-management.html

As the legal eyes and ears of a company, general counsel takes a front row seat in handling lawsuits and corporate legal matters.  And while that role can make for high-profile recognition, it can also subject in-house attorneys to increased liability.  Attorneys from Schiff Hardin released a white paper outlining strategies for general counsel to avoid personal liability.  Below are salient take-aways from the publication.

In-house counsel, how can you avoid personal liability?