Mergers and bankruptcies reduce the number of law departments; breakups of companies and spinoffs of major operations create law departments. The NY Times, Jan. 19, 2011 at B 5, discusses the tale of conglomerates, tracking stock and tax-free spinoffs. It mentions Fortune Brands, Motorola, Sara Lee, and ITT as corporate…
Last year 813 law departments benefited from the largest benchmark survey ever done. This year’s survey will add hundreds more as it offers the same easy submission, zero cost, bi-monthly releases, clear charts and tables, as well as comparative data and even broader industry and country coverage. Departments that provide…
Trend lines on scatter-grams let data analysts not only see patterns better but also know the formula that describes the best-fit line. With such a formula, An example would be a scatter-plot that shows the rise in bonuses as a percentage of total compensation the higher lawyers rise. With the…
When I tied together three international observations — compensation differences around the world in law departments, differences in the number of paralegals and fundamental spending metrics — it seemed appropriate to reach an international audience. I published the piece in CPA Global’s New Legal Review Blog in November. If you…
Daniel Lucien Buehr of Schindler Management spoke about compliance in November at ACC Europe’s 17th Annual Conference. Someone who reported on his session wrote the following: “After conducting extensive benchmarking, Buehr maintained that any company must be spending at least 0.25 percent of revenue on compliance or face governance problems.”…
Ten years or so ago, 18 countries deemed to operate under a common law system boasted 35 companies listed on a stock exchange for every million people in the country. Thus, if the United States had about 250 million residents when the article was published in the Economist, April 19,…
“Synthetic indices,” as explained by the Economist, Jan. 8, 2011 at 60, are “indices combining several related measures into a single number which are often used to back broad claims.” For example, an index of corporate IP prowess might be constructed from the number of patents applied for in a…
Alcatel-Lucent Bell Labs employs 1,000 researchers and has produced a portfolio of 27,600 active patents; it added 2,100 as registered in 2009. These figures come from 2010 Intelligence Report & Directory Series of Leaders League at 82, which gave me the opportunity to speculate on a benchmark: in-house patent lawyers…
Whew! It’s been a whirlwind of a year, and so deeply gratifying to consider that close to a thousand general counsel have benefited from the largest benchmark survey ever conducted – twice as large as all the others last year combined! Law departments that still want to submit their data…
A footnote in the 2010 Supplement to Robert Haig’s Successful Partnering Between Inside and Outside Counsel (West) in Chapter 17 at 17, refers to a listing of the 200 largest legal departments. That list, it says, “has provided general counsel with a unique benchmarking tool to measure their staffing levels…