A few days after publishing an article on the importance for in-house departments to turn their back from the "cost center mindest" and to embrace a value creation, I was thrilled to find a impressive illustration of the same idea: The International Herald Tribune of 3 October 2007 explains how Dupont's legal department is turning itself into a profit center. Read the IHT article.
Antoine Henry de Frahan
Conversations with US in-house counsel have led me to consider that this article may be an example of an effective sales job by an in-house counsel rather than a true example of value-creation by the legal department. The arguments are the following:
- you can't rely on big settlements as a business model for the legal departments. Big settlements occur sometimes, but it is not a predictable line of business. You may be high a year, but very low the next year.
- patent litigation is not really "value creation". After all, the lawyers did not create the patent.
- what is described in this article is bascially what all legal departments (in the US) are doing. The only difference is that the other departments are not making articles about it.
I do not want to take a position, but I think it is fair to show the different opinions about the article.
Posted by: Antoine Henry de Frahan | December 03, 2007 at 10:27 AM