Previous posts have mentioned some of the reasons “number of lawyers in a legal department” is inexact. “Number of lawyers” in the colloquial sense will do for many purposes, such as headcount and planning how many attendees at a retreat, even though more precise or different metrics could add insights.…
The first 100 or so participants in 2012 in the General Counsel Metrics industry benchmark survey were eager to take part, as demonstrated by how quickly they did so. Do their metrics look fundamentally different from last year’s final group of 840, which clearly had some late-in-the-season participants? No, most…
We urge you to click on this survey link and take a few minutes to enter your 2011 staff numbers as well as your internal and external legal spend. The first 105 participants in this year’s General Counsel Metrics industry benchmark survey let me start to gauge the eventual group.…
We often use the term “equals” very loosely. “Her matter load is equal to his.” “Our paralegals-per-billion-of revenue is equal to the median for our industry.” In my column Morrison on Metrics: “Lies told by the equals sign,” I point out that “equal” rarely means what we think when we…
A fascinating chapter in a recent book on natural experiments in history explains our country’s history of so-called free banking (anyone could set up a bank, rather than have to get government approval). According to Jared Diamond and James A. Robinson, Eds., Natural Experiments in History (Harvard Univ. 2010) at…
A previous post has used this cornerstone of statistics, the Central Limit Theorem, but did not explain it fully (See my post of July 30, 2011: the Central Limit Theory.). In George G. Szpiro, Pricing the Future: finance, physics, and the 300-year journey to the Black-Scholes equation (Basic Books 2011)…
We often use the term “equals” very loosely. “Her matter load is equal to his.” “Our paralegals-per-billion-of revenue is equal to the median for our industry.” In my column Morrison on Metrics: “Lies told by the equals sign,” I point out that “equal” rarely means what we think when we…
Much of what happens in and regarding law departments doesn’t permit measurement. That intractable limitation on our understanding and analysis was underscored by an obituary in the Economist, March 10, 2012 at 106, of James Q. Wilson. The Harvard professor spent decades studying politics and society, subjects where challenges of…
The 2011 In-House Counsel Barometer, by Davies Ward Phillips & Vineberg in association with the Canadian Corporate Counsel Association, includes responses from 864 lawyers in Canada. Of them, 295 were with publicly traded companies and 206 private. Public companies likely having larger law departments, this survey, which looked at individual…
The 2011 In-House Counsel Barometer, produced by the Canadian law firm Davies Ward Phillips & Vineberg In association with the Canadian Corporate Counsel Association (CCCA) at 11, reports that the average number of hours worked per week up north was 47. What the median hours was is not mentioned. If…