Corporate Counsel  magazine has a cover story on five loudly promoted Next Big Things designed to cut outside counsel fees drastically—like outside auditing of bills.  See which are still around and which underwhelmed. 

Hint:  If you think senior partners love suspicious second-guessing and micro-management, then auditing is a winner.

Is it too early to say what impact Sarbanes-Oxley is actually having on quarterly earnings reports? Not according to the famous money manager Jim Cramer [trivia fact: he's a Harvard Law grad].

He believes the compliance landscape has drastically changed—and that the witches' brew of analysts' puffery, Internet chat-room rogues, all-CNBC-all-the-time, and vulpine CEO's and CFO's is not returning any time soon.  Why?

• the DOJ takedown of Arthur Andersen (too radical even for Eliot Spitzer's blood);
• SOX itself, which beyond anything else awakens CEO's and CFO's to the prospect of personally going to jail should their sub-alterns get too aggressive; and finally
• that white-collar jail-time is now as serious, if not more so, than that meted out garden-variety felons.

He may be right, he may be wrong, but he's putting his money where his mouth is.

Network Computing magazine has a cover story comparing heavy-duty document management systems—in this case via responses to an RFP they sent out with requirements for a hypothetical $10-billion market cap, NYSE listed company. 

While the scale of the project might seem to exceed what an "ordinary" law firm needs, the article is nonetheless worth a look for anyone with a public-company client:  Yes, they selected an "Editor's Choice" winner, but "any one [of the systems we reviewed] could be a lifesaver if litigation looms."

Maybe an attractive culture will only get you so far.  That, at least, seems to be part of the message of this story about management and strategic changes at Philadelphia's Ballard-Spahr.

Perhaps the biggest change to management is that they will formally install some. And precisely to what end?  To raise the all-important number, revenue-per-partner.  (You thought the all-important number was profits-per-partner?  Aha, that can be fudged!  Revenue cannot.)  To achieve this, Ballard will be looking at expanding both its practice areas and its geographic locations. 

Bonus quote on the latter strategy:  New York will not be a target because "it's nothing but a money pit."

According to CIO Magazine, the question is not whether you should or will convert your phone system to "Voice over IP," but when:  IP telephony industry revenue is forecast to double in the next three years (to $1.2-billion).  Not only are its features far greater and costs far lower, but the existing PBX-&c. infrastructure is fundamentally dysfunctional.

"We were spending thousands in long distance alone. Our phone guys were charging us $130 a pop just to come in and add another line. It was insane."

Do I agree with the CIO Magazine article that VoIP is the wave of the future? Actually, as of this week I can say it's the wave of the present. I converted my office from Verizon's flat-rate monthly billing (which ended up costing well over $100/month for one line by the time all the excise taxes, surcharges, local sales taxes, etc., were added in) to VoIP courtesy of Vonage, and I'm now paying a flat $29/month for infinitely superior service.

And I can get voicemail messages automatically emailed to me as sound files; I'm just beginning to explore the possibilities of that.

Now, I defer to no one as a fan of "privatization" on general principles, but this has evidently been a disaster for both the Navy and EDS.  Some of the problems are attributable to the peculiar delights of government contracting—for example, that the roughly 40% of the work previously done by minority-, women-owned, and otherwise protected subcontractors could not be diminished regardless of productivity gains—but according to this account, the root problem is the toxic mixture generated by the collision between a sloppy RFP and the sales culture of IT service providers.

The "winner's curse" in yet an other incarnation.

From a private banker's perspective, how much debt is too much on a per-partner basis?  And what factors go into assessing the creditworthiness and stability of a firm?  If your firm might need capital for investments in IT or office expansion, you might want to read this first.

A:  None of the above.  Chalk it up to accrual accounting.

In September 2003, Venable moved its Washington office, with nearly 500 employees, over the course of two weekends.  The story of the move, from the IT department's perspective, has now been told.

More interesting than the technical logistics of the move—which should be invisible if executed with proficiency—is the discussion of deciding what type of infrastructure to build for the next 10 years.  The entire office is one big WiFi hotspot, just for starters.

Born or made?  Saying some partners are better at generating business than others is platitudinous:  But now some firms are actually trying to do something about it, by hiring sales trainers.  Forgive me, I meant to say, "executive mentors."

Professor Lawrence Lessig, the Stanford Law professor, has published a new book, Free Culture, reviewed by John Swartz of The New York Times. Although I haven't read it yet (but I will), Lessig argues that it's time for a "clean sheet" re-thinking of copyright law.  Specifically:

"Upon reflection, it should be obvious that in the world with the Internet, copies should not be the trigger for copyright law. More precisely, they should not always be the trigger for copyright law."

Information Week has a cover story on "Voice over IP [Internet Protocol]" phone systems, which delivers the message that initially-skeptical early adopters of this new way to handle your phone infrastructure are the strongest evangelizers of all, with "Cost of Ownership" rated superior for VoIP by a margin of 70% - 18% over your conventional phone service, "Advanced Features" by a margin of 68% - 8%, "User Satisfaction" by a margin of 28% - 18%, BUT "Quality of Service" lagging by 14% - 30%."
But clearly the wave of the future. If you haven't already, sell your AT&T.