ALM Legal Intelligence obtained 2009 data from 116 law departments. Findings from that survey appear in Corp. Counsel, Dec. 2010 at 85, including total law department fees/expenses (inside and outside) per lawyer. Each of five columns represents a group of participating law departments with different numbers of lawyers. For example,…
Infographics specialists focus on how to present information visually and effectively. The images used, the headlines written, the fonts chosen and arrangements designed, these combine with narrative to help people absorb what is most compelling about a set of numbers. To admire a slew of examples, visit Randy Krum’s blog,…
Wired, Jan. 2011 at 92, describes a stock trader who identified seven key factors, such as revenue and earnings growth, most predictive of a stock’s performance. He then used a publicly available program from UC Berkeley called the differential evolution optimizer to wade through huge amounts of data on these…
One venerable source for benchmarks about the in-house legal community started years ago at PriceWaterhouseCoopers and made its way about six years back to what is now Thomson Reuters HildebrandtBakerRobbins. I have commented on results from that series, including particularly its compensation and personnel data (See my post of Nov.…
Data from the General Counsel Metrics (GCM) global benchmark survey, with more than 700 law departments and still collecting data, gives a much more nuanced view of total legal spending. The 63 participating companies with 2009 revenue of at least $20 billion had median total legal spending as a percentage…
Historical benchmark figures catch my eye, and so did an Of Counsel, Feb. 17, 1997 at 2, article. It cites the 1997 Law Department Functions and Expenditures Survey, co-published by ACC’s predecessor and Altman Weil Pensa. Since then, ACC has teamed with Empsight for benchmark and compensation data and Altman…
Was there a drop in corporate spending on internal legal departments and outside counsel during 2009? Folks at Thomson Reuters HildebrandtBakerRobbins think so and credit general counsel’s management nous (See my post of Oct. 21, 2010: median total legal spending dropped due to management discipline.). I disagreed with the reason…
On a panel last week I heard and relished the phrase “Aces in their Places.” Jeff Firestone, a Vice President in the UPS Law Department, invoked it while he described UPS’s continuing efforts to put the best lawyer for the job in the right location and set of responsibilities. A…
Counter-intuitively, it may be that US law departments staffed around the world spend less on internal and external costs, in terms of revenue, than geographically centralized departments. The fundamental reason could be that the revenue their companies enjoy from operations in foreign countries outstrips what is made by US-bound companies.…
As an avid benchmarker and advocate of measurement, I still thought it fair to discuss the gaming of numbers. Once a general counsel announces that something has to be counted, those who count will figure out how to count most advantageously. Thumbs go on the scale or under the scale.…