Webs of in-house staff: a network perspective

We can understand law departments and their operations in a different, far-reaching and fruitful way if we apply the concepts and analytic techniques of network theory. To do so, we have to first familiarize ourselves with some network-speak and then I will suggest five applications of network analysis.

A network is a set of interconnected people who can communicate with each other, share information and achieve results that would be hard, if not impossible, to do if the network did not exist. Every law department, therefore, meets those criteria for a network. Network mavens would view a legal department as made up of “nodes” — people or groups of people who deal with other people as part of providing legal services. They would depict those relationships as “links” between the nodes (sometimes called “edges”). Four parts of the definition first given contain the gist of it. Networks are (1) interconnected — participants (nodes) can reach each other; (2) those participants communicate and transmit information back and forth (links); (3) information is whatever reduces uncertainty and helps a participant make a decision; and (4) alternative substitutes for the network are much less effective, if they serve at all.