Consider one more contributor to the mystery why total legal spending as a percentage of revenue (TLS/Rev.) declines as companies grow larger. TLS/Rev is widely recognized as the preeminent metric in terms of reliability and importance (See my posts of Dec. 5, 2007: stability of the ratio over a decade.)…
A methodological spoke in the wheel of many surveys is selection bias. If survey data comes mostly from what surfaces on its own, because someone chooses to respond, the data may not be representative of the universe of data. It may suffer from what statisticians refer to as “selection bias”…
Many times I have dissected survey results where I suspected poor methodology, so I pulled together my posts on survey methodology. I have followed a framework (in bold) defined by the Manual for Complex Litigation (See my post of Jan. 16, 2006: the Manual on trustworthy surveys; and Oct. 26,…
I bump into metrics and I can’t resist probing them. For example, a press release by the Association of Corporate Counsel, dated June 30, 2008, announces that “global growth drives agenda of in-house lawyers in top companies.” I couldn’t help trying to figure out whether we should rely on that…
This blog has at least a dozen posts on specific benchmarks for law departments. I will eventually compile and publish that metapost. Meanwhile, other aspects of benchmarks – aside from specific metrics – deserve mention. A general counsel ought to give thought how best to present benchmark data to senior…
For several years now I have chafed when clients respond to a recommendation with “Who else does this?” Even though lawyers like to follow precedent and many of them are allergic to risks and change, I haven’t yet screwed up my courage enough to say, “Who cares? If the change…
If a company tracks total spending by staff functions – IT, Facilities, HR, and Finance – as a percentage of revenue, then each function can show relative performance over time as a benchmark against the other functions (See my posts of April 9, 2005: finance, IT and HR benchmarks; and…
When economists publish articles based on results from analyzed datasets, they publish the dataset online so that others can test it or make use of it in other ways, according to Ian Ayres, Super-Crunchers: Why Thinking-By-Numbers is the New Way to be Smart (Bantam 2007). It would be wonderful if…
Many organizations want to survey law departments. In my recent gargantuan collection, I listed 72 of my posts during 2007 that drew on a survey of law departments, most of which surveys had been conducted that year (See my post of March 2, 2008.). Because some survey results deserved more…
Surveys of law departments go on all the time (See my post of Oct, 17, 2005 on the plethora of law-department surveys.), and I implore readers to send word of any to me. I warmly embrace every survey of law departments that I can lay my hands on (See my…