A provider of software technology to legal departments, Marcus Linden of LexisNexis, writes in Met. Corp. Counsel, Vol. 17, Sept. 2009 at 22, that after outside counsel expenses, “The next two largest drivers are salaries for in-house staff and technology costs.” He is correct about compensation-related costs dominating in-house budgets…
Despite having written fulsomely about fully-loaded costs per hour of inside lawyers, I have not explicitly recognized two areas where those costs cannot be compared to the effective billing rates of outside counsel. Law departments piggy-back on technology infrastructure, such as backup, local area networks, email, document management, intranets, bulk…
Research by the General Counsel Roundtable published in 2001 (based on 1999 data) found that “legal departments with a business manager pay, on average, hourly rates 9% lower than departments without a business manager.” This could well be a research conclusion where confounding or correlated variables undermine the reliability of…
According to the US Department of Energy, cited in an ad from Fortune, Vol. 160, Sept. 28, 2009 at 55, “lighting is by far the largest user of electricity in commercial buildings. It consumes 38% of the total – more than space heating, cooling, ventilation, equipment, and computers combined.” (emphasis…
Richard Hennity, a senior lawyer from HSBC, spoke at the Legal Week Corporate Counsel Forum last week. HSBC, with 850 lawyers and 1350 legal staff, has for three years run a six-lawyer offshore program in Malaysia (See my post of April 13, 2008: pilot program of HSBC with Malaysian branch…
Leah Cooper, the global managing attorney for Rio Tinto, spoke at the Legal Week Corporate Counsel Forum last week. Her remarks added nuance to what I have written previously about the company and its ground-breaking arrangement with CPA Global (See my post of June 4, 2007: 50 lawyers worldwide for…
A speaker at the Legal Week Corporate Counsel Forum this past week was from BAT (British American Tobacco). He mentioned two side benefits from using a legal process offshoring vendor. One was that if routine, commodity chores go to the offshore provider, the workday ennui of the law department’s lawyers…
A recent article clearly states how offshoring could help almost any legal department that has responsibility for a large number of contracts. Written by two Mindcrest principles, the article describes how they helped restore order to a large number of contracts and agreements governing properties a client managed. The client…
Previous posts about ROI calculation noted the time value of money and some of the complex factors affecting benefits. Nailing down the costs is no less complex, according to guest author Steven Levy. A valid ROI calculation includes the following factors on the cost side: All ROI calculations should include…
A valid ROI calculation, according to guest author Steven Levy, includes the following factors on the benefits side: 1. Time value of money, usually at the corporate internal discount rate (often ~10%/year). Assignment of returns to the proper fiscal period. You don’t start receiving returns until after the system is…