If you calculate your expected net return for an investment, be it dual monitors, document assembly, or databases, you should recognize the time-value of money by discounting costs and benefits for years in the future. Whereas many of your costs will be frontloaded in the first year or two, your…
The publicity about the offshore deal between CPA Global and Rio Tinto gushes, an ink river about Rio. This blog has poured out its share, but here is another small stream. The author of an article in Corp. Counsel, Vol. 16, Sept. 2009 at 60, wonders, “Should its [Rio Tinto’s]…
The e-discovery niche, according to the ABA J., Vol. 95, Aug. 2009 at 29, is crowded with about 600 vendors. They are jostling for pieces of a large pie. George Socha, a consultant deeply involved in research about e-discovery vendors, projects that “[C]ommercial spending in this young niche is expected…
Is there any incentive for corporations to turn to LPOs for such tasks as document reviews when you compare current Indian rates with the recent downward trend in rates domestically? Fewer and fewer U.S reviews are being performed by the expensive big-firm associates. It is much more common — and…
It has interested me how the operating costs of legal departments differ from those of law firms. Some figures for law firms on that point come from Patrick McKenna’s MCK Int’l Rev., Spring 2009 at 11. www.patrickmcKenna.com The largest expense for both departments and firms covers occupancy costs, which make…
DiscoveryMetrics™, by Casewerx Development, focuses squarely on reducing a law department’s hemorrhage of expense in litigation — document review. Manny Guerrero, a Partner and co-founder of Casewerx, sent samples of a DiscoveryMetrics dashboard and from looking at his slides it appears to be a useful tool. The dashboard shows productivity,…
To be more accurate, these eight beliefs are not total inventions of sourcing heads. Some truth creeps in, as I have noted. Myth 1: Legal departments don’t know how much they spend. Fact: Most departments know their total domestic legal spending reasonably well, or as well as the accounting department…
In three previous posts I listed a total of 27 energy-saving ideas (See my post of April 27, 2008: ten tips; Oct. 12, 2008: nine ideas; Nov. 9, 2008: three ideas; March 11, 2009: four more steps toward environmental preservation; and May 29, 2009: power strips and solar battery chargers.).…
A long article about management initiatives in the legal group at Rio Tinto, in Legal Strat. Rev., Summer 2009 at 13, describes a service provider’s tool called a “legal heat map.” The provider, CPA Global, a major LPO company, developed the heat map “to help it identify and filter legal…
A recent article lambastes commercial arbitrations on the basis of their sometime costs. Writing in the NYSBA J., Vol. 81, July/Aug. 2009 at 30, Ronald Offenkrantz describes the unregulated and often unfettered charges of arbitrators. Various organizations set some rules for their arbitrator members, such as the AAA Commercial Rules…