The Metropolitan Corporate Counsel has the ability to reach corporate counsel throughout the country with important messages both in print and on the web. We are currently helping Lawyers for Civil Justice to reach our audience with what may well be its most important message ever – namely the need for corporate counsel to submit comments with respect to proposed changes in the Rules of Civil Procedure by February 15. The two most important rules amendments are a revision to Rule 26(b)(1), which re-defines the scope of discovery, and a rewrite of Rule 37(e), which provides for the first time a rules-based standard for imposing sanctions for failure to preserve discoverable information (see this month’s cover story).
Month-in and month-out, MCC is valued by corporate counsel as a way to select outside counsel who will win cases or successfully handle other assignments. Identifying such counsel is critical to a corporate counsel’s success.
Direct personal assessment over time of lawyers in action is important. Corporate counsel can do this by attending events at which lawyers speak and meetings of lawyers’ committees of trade associations. Another approach is to interact with outside counsel on bar association committees that are relevant to the general counsel’s activities. However, such events provide general counsel with a relatively narrow exposure to outside counsel, whereas many corporate counsel need information about lawyers in a broad spectrum of practice areas located throughout the country and the world.
A useful technique for finding the right lawyer for almost any matter that might be handled by corporate counsel is to do a search of lawyers who have written MCC articles or participated in MCC’s interviews using the sophisticated search engine at www.metrocorpcounsel.com. Chances are that you will find the ideal lawyer – even one who handled a similar fact situation. Lawyers whose work has appeared in MCC recognize that this is an important credential, and a reference or link to their work frequently appears in their bios on their firms’ websites. Because MCC is such an effective way to find new clients, we send each author or interviewee a PDF of her or his article or interview to send to clients and potential clients.
We not only publish the works of outside counsel in print and on the web, but we also publish articles and interviews of a wide array of legal service providers including, among others, those who test legal arguments using mock juries, prepare exhibits, supply expert witnesses, help with e-discovery, provide security and cybersecurity protection and advice, supply expertise in Big Data, and offer contract technology that assures that guidelines are met.
This month we are delighted to welcome Dykema Gossett PLLC with offices in many cities throughout the U.S. to our roster of Supporting Law Firms.
Published January 29, 2014.