Why is it that some law departments go through an end-of-year rite, asking their law firms to give them estimates of November and December bills so that the department can accrue for them, yet other law departments ignore that effort? A major regional bank I have worked with makes no…
The Economist (Aug. 13, 2005 at 61-62) cited the estimate of Institutional Shareholder Services that payments under pending and tentative settlements in class-action lawsuits had reached $20 billion. Based on the typical payment to plaintiffs’ lawyers in large securities cases of 5-10 percent or so, that means “a bonanza of…
The ABA Journal, in an article in its August 2005 issue (pg. 38) quotes a lawyer as saying, “The issue that threatens to swamp everything else on cost controls is electronic discovery.” Later, the article cites a Jones Day study that found that the average corporate executive has accumulated about…
Despite yearning to reduce law firm costs, despite dissatisfaction with one or more firms currently handling litigation, despite finding a firm that offers better prospects for costs and results, despite all this most in-house litigation managers balk: they are worried about loss of case-specific knowledge and about savings being eaten…
“Cost savings [in joint litigation support efforts] can be considerable in all aspects of the document discovery process – savings typically range from 40% to 60%.” This estimate came from an article by a lawyer, Clyde Hettrick, Director of Legal Research at LRN – The Legal Knowledge Company. The article…
I have heard estimates of around 60%, but have yet to see quantitative research. The quote comes from Richard Finkelman, a Navigant Consulting director (Litigation Support, June 2005 at 3). The article describes Sears Roebuck’s project to review 4 million pages of documents and records comprising 175 gigabytes. Sears combined…
Corporate Legal Times (Nov. 2003 at 37) quoted Jon Bellis, then of PricewaterhouseCoopers: “All things being equal, a stable legal organization will see inside costs increase by about 7 percent every year…” Why should inside costs increase faster than the Consumer Price Index? Around three quarters of inside spend goes…
Return-on-investment calculations make sense, but law departments can abuse them if they try to justify investments based on unrealistic extrapolations on “loss of productivity.” The typical ROI argument goes something like this: It takes a typical lawyer six minutes each day clearing spam from Outlook. We have 100 lawyers. Therefore,…
In a previous post (July 30, 2005), I discussed outside counsel fees that are borne by insurance carriers and that do not show up on a law department’s budget. Other expenses are kept off-budget when a project’s legal costs are capitalized, such as when there is an acquisition. My view…
Some law departments do not count in their outside counsel spending those fees paid on their behalf by insurance carriers who are defending claims. This off-the-books treatment continues, even though the company’s premiums may well currently or retroactively reflect such costs. Other law departments, faced with large product liability claims…