Lexakos, a consulting group that advises on governance, compliance, and risk management recently released is Chief Legal Officer 2008 Strategic Planning Survey. Of the “over 100” chief legal officers who returned the survey, only 21 percent “trust outside counsel to manage costs and choose the best alternatives for document review.”…
What difference in terms of total legal spending might it make if one company is principally self insured and a comparable competitor has first-dollar insurance for litigation (See my post of Oct. 31, 2007: Fulbright & Jaworski data on insurance coverage against nine kinds of litigation; April 6, 2007: McDonald’s…
Results from a survey with 84 law-department respondents, published in PLCLaw Dept. Quart., Vol. 3, Jan.-March 2007 at 24, tell us that the majority of work sent to outside counsel is because of a lack of specialized expertise in-house. About 20 percent of work is sent outside because the in-house…
A profile of Kellye Walker, North American general counsel of beverage-giant Diageo, in Legal Times, Vol. 30, Aug. 20, 2007, mentions that entire law department held its legal conference in Shanghai. Diageo’s legal department totals approximately 80 lawyers. The cost of that gathering, which I presume to have been for…
Previous posts have addressed different aspects of the fully-loaded cost per hour of corporate counsel (See my post of Oct.18, 2005: how to calculate a fully-loaded cost per lawyer hour; Nov. 16, 2005: links to other posts; Nov. 16, 2005: about $190 an hour; and Jan.10, 2006: estimate for US…
A number of recent posts have drawn on an article published in Met. Corp. Counsel, Vol. 16, July 2008 at 39, by two partners at Meiselman, Denlea, Packman, Carton & Eberz. The authors boldly state that “Most corporations could cut their litigation costs in half without adversely impacting the outcome…
Two paragraphs in a survey report offer some insights into how European law departments use procurement personnel. The data comes from PLCLaw Dept. Quart., Vol. 3, Jan.-March 2007 at 23. Of the respondents to the magazine’s 2006 survey, 18.3 percent of the law departments involved procurement staff, up from 12.9…
Two partners in a small litigation firm assert three steps law departments should take to control motion practice by their litigation firms. As published in Met. Corp. Counsel, Vol. 16, July 2008 at 39, the steps are (1) permit no motions to be made without your approval; (2) permit a…
A columnist in ACC Docket, Vol. 30, March 2008 at 20 (Ron Pol), confesses “10 little secrets of working in-house.” His second secret begins with a sentence that I dispute — “You represent one of two choices for the business: Fixed costs for the legal department, or outside counsel at…
Many managers of outside counsel might feel satisfied and justified when they calculate disbursements as a percentage of fees, whether they make the comparison across firms or across matters within the same firm. That calculation, however, can be misleading because if all other factors are similar, firms or matters with…