I have been struggling to write this post about KPIs.  It’s taken way longer than it should have – with several starts and stops.  First, should it be KPI or KPIs?  Just like the debate over RBI and RBIs in baseball, passions run hot on this point.  I think “KPIs” sounds better so I’m going with that.  Second – and slightly more important than the KPI/KPIs controversy – KPIs don’t work particularly well for in-house legal departments.  Actually, I had this eureka moment a long time ago when I was first asked as General Counsel to provide “SMART”[1] objectives for the legal department for an upcoming calendar year.  I literally had no clue what they (HR) were talking about.  And when I asked them for some examples, it was clear they had no clue either – at least when it came to developing SMART objectives for the legal department.  For other parts of the business, SMART objectives seemed obvious and worked great.  For legal, not so much. But, I (and my team) eventually figured it out and designed goals that were a little squishy – “SMART-ish” – but to which no one objected.  You can see some examples of this in an older post titled “Setting Goals for the Legal Department.”

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