Do rank-and-file lawyers in corporations have much enthusiasm for cutting the cost of outside counsel? I doubt it. I doubt it because they want the best lawyers they can find to help them succeed in their careers and lighten their work and worry loads (See my post of June 30,…
An article by Ben Heineman, Jr., in Corp. Counsel, Vol. 15, Nov. 2008 at 92, explains that under new accounting rules that will take effect in 2009, legal costs incurred as part of deals will have to be expensed immediately, not capitalized over a period of years. Financial Accounting Standards…
Costs of litigation counsel, the largest external expense of law departments, causes constant worry among general counsel (See my post of Feb. 26, 2008: total cost of litigation for Fortune 500; June 6, 2006: more detail on Fortune 500 litigation costs; June 22, 2008: litigation ranks highly among management challenges…
An ad for the upcoming conference of the Minority Corporate Counsel Association lists 31 sponsors (as of July 18, 2008). Among the many law firms and other service providers to firms and law departments are three companies: Intel, American Airlines, and Walmart. My supposition is that the law departments of…
So many posts on Law Department Management have had something to say about the costliness of patent litigation that I decided to corral them here (See my post of March 10, 2005: IP litigation costs; March 29, 2005: patent litigation costs; May 1, 2005: patent costs when litigated; May 4,…
One economic concept that applies to law departments is opportunity costs. As explained throughout Richard B. McKenzie, Why Popcorn Costs so Much at the Movies (Copernicus Books 2008), opportunity costs are the benefits you forego when you take an action. Most frequently the term refers to the income someone could…
To my earlier post on internal budget components (See my post of Sept. 9, 2008: budget elements.), I have added other posts that consider the mechanics and timing of law department budgets (See my post of May 30, 2005: accounts outside the normal budget; Sept. 27, 2005: outside counsel budget…
The internal budget for a legal department covers all its costs other than what are paid to or through outside counsel. Since approximately 40 percent of a typical general counsel’s budget falls into the internal bucket, how the top lawyer manages those amounts makes a major difference (See my post…
Yes, assuming the staff who handle the protection of patents and trademarks are part of the legal department, the costs of filing and renewing protection of those assets ought to be in the legal department’s budget (See my posts of Aug. 7, 2007: many international matters involve patents and trademark…
Thirty-four general ledger accounts handle the spending of a law department of a manufacturing company I assisted. The accounts seem generic for the most part, one exception being patents and another auto leases and operational expenses. I have embellished some of the accounts with prior posts on this blog. Monthly…