Previous posts have noted that among law department benchmarks, total legal spending – inside plus outside counsel costs – is the first among equals (See my post of Sept. 4, 2005 on this gold-standard metric.). Ben Heineman, GE’s former general counsel, proudly notes that “In the past decade, GE generally…
Few law departments shepherd workers’-compensation (WC) claims, yet sometimes those departments must defend lawsuits that evolve from them (See my posts of Oct. 27, 2005 on whether WC claims were in certain benchmark reports and Jan. 25, 2006 on whether law departments count WC in their reported litigation.) Law departments…
In a recent benchmarking project, we asked whether the participating law departments include in their inside budget the value of stock options and restricted stock they grant their lawyers. Only one company includes the value of stock options, which accounted for about eight percent of its inside budget. Law departments…
In a 2005 post entitled Top 10 Hidden Employment Costs, the iCatchIT site included three statements that troubled me. 1) “150,000 lawsuits related to the workplace are currently pending against U.S. businesses.” 2) “Employees prevail in 60% to 70% of cases that go to trial or hearings (Kiplinger Letter).” 3)…
An article, ABA J., Vol. 92, April 2006 at 54, gives a good overview of the three general methods to value intellectual property: income, market, or cost. Companies – more accurately their forensic experts – use those methods about evenly, according to a survey cited in the article for such…
Whenever law departments respond to survey questions that ask, “How many law firms did you retain last year?” I wonder whether the numbers they give are somewhat inflated or misleading. Two kinds of law firms that departments might add in give me pause on such metrics. In many countries, a…
An interview of Sun Microsystem’s general counsel, Mike Dillon, published on Law.com (Scott Martin), struck a spark about convergence (See my post of April 2, 2006 that challenges convergence and my article cited.). Dillon says that “probably five years ago we were using between 300 to 400 firms.” That number…
This blog has splashed posts everywhere about patents (at least 20 of them on costs, litigation, auctions, productivity, incentives and more – e-mail Rees Morrison if you would like the compilation), but it has been dry on trademarks and copyrights. I slighted trademarks and copyrights because I thought litigation, costs,…
The member firms of Lex Mundi (See my posts of May 30, 2005 and Dec. 19, 2005 about it and other associations of law firms) assembled a “country-by-country overview of the availability of protection from disclosure of communications between in-house counsel and the officers, directors, or employees of the companies…
I glimpsed the future when I read a piece by Jill Schachner Chanen, ABA J., Vol. 92, April 2006 at 22. The article discusses surveys by law firms, and singled out Kirkpatrick & Lockhart Nicholson Graham’s surveys of law departments (See my posts of March 6, 2005, and Aug. 5,…