Thread regarding 3M layoffs

This was not Ivan Fong.

You can also thank ivan fong for this. Kicked the can down the road his entire time (on everything!). Con artist of the century. Medtronic should be concerned.

A cool $13 mil blown on outside counsel bills in the failed attempt to bankrupt Aearo:

https://www.law360.com/pulse/amp/articles/1688042

We can easily lose a good number of attorneys and paras and will not even feel an iota of difference… As it is standard operating procedure is to outsource pretty much everything. IP is another black hole.

Was legal hit by layoffs? Seems like they need all the help they can get. How do you keep 330,000 + lawsuits organized?

The comments by Paralegal Nightmare are so true. Our litigation team and legal leaders do not have the experience to manage our litigation issues. We outsource everything but then it seems no one at 3M takes responsibility or ownership for the outcome.. I am not an attorney (Army vet) but know from working with our legal team they no longer have the money to do what they need to do to get the job done. As a military enlisted person I know accountable leadership is key to success.

Our litigation department in legal is not up for this. They are peacetime attorneys to go and fight the odd sour employee or fake product case. This is way beyond their paygrade. Flimflams bad luck that ivan left this festering wound for him. So like we always do, we threw money at lawyers and buried our head in the sand.

Nope. Can’t do a lean six sigma project… most belts were laid off.

those lawyers must not have a FMEA - that always fixes everything

Surely we can run a six sigma kaizen dojo lean project with a control plan and come up with standard work. That would be cheaper.

It's expensive to mount a defense against the largest mass tort in U.S. history with nearly 330,000 cases filed and approximately 260,000 pending cases. The earplug litigation represents 30% of all cases currently pending in the federal district courts.

How much could be saved by laying off expensive US lawyers and hiring presumably equally skilled lawyers from Costa Rica? Given the tremendous success of moving sourcing, HR, and other business processes there, this seems like a logical next step.