Scientists call artifacts “observations in their research that are produced entirely by some aspect of the method of research,” as explained by Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow (Farrar, Straus & Giroux 2011) at 110. Artifacts, weeds in the gardens of benchmarks, crop up when how the data is collected…
In addition to General Counsel Metrics (GC Metrics), three U.S. organizations collect data from law departments and produce benchmark metrics for all to purchase. ACC/Empsight, American Lawyer Media (ALM), and HBR Consulting set submission deadlines in the late summer and produce their reports a month or two later. On that…
An idea, possibly daft, occurred to me regarding disclosures mandated by the SEC. Would that agency conclude that investors would benefit from having comparative data on legal spend? Would that information materially help the equity markets? If so, would it have the power to require listed U.S. companies to state…
In a variation on the tort doctrine of the thin-skull plaintiff, those who care about metrics and measurement have to accept that most people, including in-house lawyers, become befuddled around very large numbers. Our cognitive capabilities didn’t evolve to let us toss off millions and billions with confidence and intuitive…
One question on a recent Mitratch survey regarding law department technology asked respondents “Do you currently invest in” and listed six classes of law department software. In order of declining percentages, the responses checked off by respondents were matter management systems (72% said they were invested in it), e-billing (52%),…
The pace of participation has picked up and there is a decent chance that this year’s final report will embrace 1,000 departments. As of today, there were 600. They reported more than 26,000 lawyers, $13.5 billion of legal spend, and $43 trillion of revenue. In addition to 22 basic industries,…
About a year ago I used the data from the 2010 General Counsel Metrics benchmark survey to calculate how 20 industries ranked against each other on four key metrics (See my post of Dec. 1, 2011: legal intensity; and Nov. 30, 2010: eight countries.). This year, at the 600 participant…
To proclaim changes in broad metrics, such as total legal spending from last year to this, a survey needs to have a fairly consistent core of respondents answering similar questions over the period of time. If there is churn – last year 100 took part but this year 50 of…
Well, thankfully, now you can. My latest InsideCounsel column plunged into the insights you can gain when you understand, calculate, and properly apply the statistical tool called the coefficient of variation. The calculation, easy to do with Excel, lets you compare the relative dispersion of two sets of numbers that…
No sooner than I published about two impossible-to-reconcile figures on corporate legal spending, and the disappointing lack of support for either figure, I read another (See my post of Oct. 25, 3011 #2: $60 billion global and $200 billion U.S. litigation figures.). In Corp. Counsel, Oct. 2011 at 55, Mark…