Editor's Desk

EDITOR’S DESK

At the tail end of the last century, in-house legal departments were beginning to look expendable. A few big departments, like the one at Chicago’s Continental Bank, disappeared. Their entire legal function was outsourced. A consensus soon formed that in-house attorneys needed to spend less time looking for potential problems with business deals and more time integrating themselves into business strategy. Overall that has been a success, but now a question which rarely arose in the bad old days when lawyers were “deal killers” is always on the table: Are inter-corporate communications involving attorneys privileged? In this issue of Today’s General Counsel, columnist Todd Presnell writes about staying on the safe side given that courts are applying widely different standards for attorney/client privilege, and David Michel and Stella Oyalabu discuss a case in Louisiana in which failing to label an opinion as “legal advice” blew the privilege for an entire email string.

Kristin Zmrhal recommends ways to cut legal department spending without compromising effectiveness. Her suggestions include staying ahead of litigation risk by engaging with other departments, automating manual processes and tracking spend against key metrics. In other articles, Dave Parks writes about the ways contract analysis can be another cost-saver, Mikaela Whitman provides some tips on how to maximize insurance recovery, and David Kelch and Cara Brack discuss trends in False Claims Act enforcement. They note that cybersecurity and Covid relief payments are two areas receiving heightened scrutiny from the DOJ.

Bob Nienhouse, Editor-In-Chief, bnienhouse@TodaysGC.com