“In 2004, a five-year qualified lawyer could expect to earn a base salary of about £68,000, a figure which since then has dropped to £63,000 last year and £62,000 this year.” This quote, from Legal Week, Vol. 8, June 22, 2006 at 13, came from data of recruiters Laurence Simons.…
An economist who studies law departments might say something like this: Division of labor (the degree of specialization) is limited by the extent of the market (demand by clients for legal services for in-house counsel services). Productivity depends on specialization, and specialization depends on the scale of operation, which is…
Quite a few companies offer content and software, such as ASP hosting, that help companies train their workers. Law departments often have a major say in which vendor the company selects and what courses or modules are offered. Listed hereafter in alphabetical order are some of the companies that provide…
Someday a law department might insist on a lower fixed payment to a firm to handle certain kinds of matters over a period of time, and invest the money thereby saved in an insurance policy. The insurance policy would cover a catastrophic outcome for the portfolio of cases or matter,…
In February 2006, Mahlab Recruitment and Harris Cost Lawyers surveyed the members of the Australian Corporate Lawyers Association (ACLA). Most of the legal teams — the report does not discuss numbers of lawyers — were 10 or fewer people, which translates typically into five lawyers or less at the normal…
Law departments must submit budgets, so there is passing interest in budget-busting litigation. I will report them periodically. For example, MasterCard is being sued by rival card companies on antitrust grounds, and expects to incur huge legal bills. It planned to go public and raise more than $2.5 billion, with…
Timekeepers in a law firm are not supposed to bill their client for the time they spend recording their time and submitting invoices. I wonder whether associates, striving to drive up their chargeable hours, honor that ethical rule. I suspect that law firms spend more time on a bill than…
The law department weighs in when the decision is whether to create a loss reserve and for how much. No company should give its law department an incentive to inflate reserves, even though auditors would check such a manipulation. Certainly, reserves could be one part of total legal spending. But…
The Federal Judicial Center surveyed 278 Federal district court judges, according to a piece in Bus. Insurance, April 11, 2005. The study is cited by critics of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s ranking of the best and worst state legal systems in America, (See my post of May 17, 2006…
A managing partner, speaking on a recent panel, responded to a question about the prevalence of hourly billing. He said that his firm, with hundreds of lawyers, represented only a small number of clients on matters governed by alternative billing, but he then gave that tired horse about hourly billing…