ATLANTA, March 23, 2006 (PRIMEZONE) -- Top attorneys from some of America's leading companies will serve on the panel for an upcoming roundtable hosted by GC South magazine titled "Managing Outside Counsel: Using Legal Project Management to Increase Efficiency and Control Costs."
The program will examine how to adapt project management techniques for use in the legal department, with the goal of managing litigation, transactions and outside counsel for maximum efficiency, transparency and value.
The panelists include:
-- Michael J. Kline, The Coca-Cola Company's Counsel for Intellectual
Property Litigation
-- Laureen Seeger, General Counsel of McKesson Corporation
-- John Sabine DeGroote, BearingPoint, Inc.'s Deputy General Counsel
and Chief Litigation Counsel
-- Grant W. Collingsworth, Partner at Morris, Manning & Martin, LLP
and leader of the firm's project management initiative.
The program will be moderated by Steve Korn, publisher of the Fulton County Daily Report, and former vice chairman and chief operating officer for Cable News Network, Inc.
The keynote speaker will be Linda Klausing, Morris, Manning & Martin's Director of Legal Project Management and a member of the Project Management Institute. Before joining the firm, Klausing was most recently an Information Technology Service Manager for The Home Depot. She previously served as a project manager for Georgia-Pacific Corporation and managed the Law and Corporate Security IT Group. She was on the Georgia-Pacific leadership team that developed the Corporate System Service ACE (Above and Beyond Client Expectations) concept, developing ideas for improving client services. She also has project management experience at CheckFree and NationsBank.
"It's very exciting to be among the first to open a dialog on project management in the legal community," Klausing says. "It's a groundbreaking idea, and there are many aspects to explore."
The luncheon roundtable will be held Wednesday, April 12 at 11:30 a.m. at Maggiano's in Buckhead. Morris, Manning & Martin, LLP is the exclusive law firm sponsor.
GC South, which is distributed to 7,000 in-house attorneys in 11 southeastern states, hosts bi-monthly roundtables on a variety of business and legal topics affecting company lawyers. An edited transcript of the "Managing Outside Counsel: Using Legal Project Management to Increase Efficiency and Control Costs" roundtable discussion will be published in the June 2006 issue of GC South. GC South is part of the ALM family of publications, which also includes American Lawyer magazine and the National Law Journal and the Fulton County Daily Report.
There is no cost to attend the roundtable, but attorneys interested in attending must pre-register. For more information or to reserve a seat, contact Rachael Fishkind at rfishkind@alm.com or 404-419-2821.
Morris, Manning & Martin, LLP (www.mmmlaw.com) enjoys national prominence for its corporate finance, securities, litigation, technology, telecommunications, insurance, healthcare, environmental and real estate practices. The firm has offices in Atlanta, Washington, D.C., Charlotte, Raleigh-Durham, and Princeton.