Deep within a Metropolitan Corporate Counsel interview of Eric Elfman, the founder and CEO of DataCert (Sept. 2005 at 33) , a sentence caught my eye. Elfman’s company, founded in 1998 – the primeval days of e-billing, has more than 70 law departments using its electronic invoice management software. “We’ve…
In a recent consulting project, we studied the relationship between law firm’s blended billing rate and the number of lawyers in the firm. For 12 law firms, all based in the U.S. and nearly all of them exceeding 200 lawyers, when we looked at more than $200M worth of invoices…
These costs rarely surface, so I was interested to see that the law department of New York City disclosed that it spent on a document management system for “more than half” of its 650 lawyers together with a litigation support system a total of $3.4 million. (NY Law J. Aug.…
Is there a proper procedure or standard for the date on which you convert foreign currency invoices? I have seen a British company that sets a currency’s conversion rate for the entire year, and therefore the date of the invoice or its payment does not matter. I have also seen…
The 650-lawyer law department of New York City has begun sending hypothetical bills to all the City agencies it represents in litigation. The mock bills detail how much it has cost the City to defend the agency’s cases, which is primarily inside lawyers’ time (See my earlier post today about…
Under a typical contingent fee arrangement, when a law department retains a firm to sue another company the firm receives 33 percent of the recovery if the case settles before trial and 40 percent if the case goes to trial (Corp. Counsel, June 2005 at pg. 69). According to the…
If, and it’s a big if, one or more of your law firms agree to knock off 2-3 percent for your paying them in, say, less than 10 days (See my posts of May 4 and Aug. 24, 2005 dubious about such discounts.) you have to change some internal operations.…
The website of Legal Cost Control includes a brief bio for Richard Hess, Esq. It describes him as having been a “consultant in the legal cost containment arena for 15 years.” My mouse dropped, however, when I read that he has “reviewed over $10 Billion in professional billings.” Mind reeling,…
A site hosted by JURIS, which offers a leading law-firm time and billing system, has a post (Aug. 1, 2005) that urges firms to use retainer billing, especially retainers for the coming quarter in advance, and to periodically renegotiate the retainer rate based on activity. The note closes with the…
I have a feeling that law firms do not care much whether their corporate clients pay in 10 days, 15 days or 45 days. They are not inclined to give a discount – say, one or two percent – simply for being paid faster. They may grant a discount for…