Consider this hypothesis: lawyers per billion correlates positively with an industry’s average margin of profit. The logic is that high technology and financial services, industries marked by relatively high profit margins, have more lawyers per billion than do commodity industries that run on low margins, like extraction and agricultural products…
Data from a recent benchmark survey, covering responses from 44 law departments in Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA), allowed a different analysis of IP spending. Those law departments reported their external counsel spend as well as their spend on patent and trademark registration, maintenance and annuity costs (See my…
This is the second in a series of postings by Jeff Kaplan on compliance and ethics (C&E) programs and cost. The first examined the growing costs of C&E program failures. In this and succeeding posts I’ll explore non-costly ways to achieve C&E program successes. One of these is to build…
Some general counsel would simply like to talk about a situation and get some expert advice, immediately and in flexible doses. They can’t afford a big, expensive consulting project; they don’t want to wade through endless pages of reading. To meet that occasional desire for advice specific to a particular…
Paul Boynton Esq. of In-House Legal, a production of Legal Talk Network, recently interviewed me for a podcast. I spoke for about ten minutes about offshoring, competitive bids and secondments. Those topics, Paul and I had agreed, are among the leading-edge ideas in law department management. For your listening pleasure,…
As I understand a recent article, heavy hitters in the banking world have agreed some conflict of interest rules that more realistically adapt to current realities. Corp. Counsel, Vol. 16, March 2009 at 62, explains that Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, UBS and JPMorgan Chase, among other banks, “are offering waivers…
A month ago this blog dropped the bombshell that facilities costs for US law departments range around $25 per square foot (See my post of Jan. 29, 2009: based on US office rates nationwide.). That post left room to ask: “What is the typical square footage used by a US…
Warning: I am not a CPA, but I try to be accurate, so I invite anyone to correct me on this topic. A patent is an asset that depreciates. As defined by Fireworks Zone, “Depreciation is writing off a tangible asset as consumed on pro-rata basis, for the estimated pre-defined…
I welcome guest blogger Jeff Kaplan, one of the country’s foremost legal experts on compliance and ethics. Are there practical ways of containing or even reducing compliance and ethics (“C&E”) program costs while still maintaining an effective program? I believe that there are, and in future postings will describe some…
One element in the calculation of fully-loaded internal costs are vacation days (See my post of Aug. 27, 2008: fully-loaded cost per lawyer hour with 31 references.). Therefore, conscientious and obsessive, I spent time one recent holiday collecting my posts that involve vacations (See my post of May 11, 2008:…