Humans can do it only laboriously, but the sleuths in e-billing software can easily spot where a law firm lawyer has billed unreasonably high hours during the same day across multiple matters. If four in-house counsel each review the same month’s bills from four different matters handled by the same…
Some research done for a consulting client disclosed a clear trend for average partner rates to rise as the size of law firms increases. Specifically, as firm size increases by 100 lawyers, the average partner rate per hour increases by $13. Let’s apply this correlation. Assume the average partner billing…
If you ask three or four firms to propose their approach, staffing and budget for a new matter, each firm being capable of handling the work and each firm knowing their competitors for the work, you will save outside-counsel fees just for doing that (See my post of Aug. 5,…
Here is a challenge for all law departments: strive to have at least 25 percent of your law firm spending be on some basis other than hourly billing (or discounts from hourly billing). Previous posts have mentioned several methods (See my posts of May 24, 2006 about unit billing; Nov.…
To have non-employees (or their software) scour bills of your law firms for reductions makes for a poor practice (See my post of Dec. 3, 2006 for my arguments on this assertion and references cited.), yet many bill auditors make a living doing exactly that (See my post of Dec.…
At a recent conference, a partner at Kirkland & Ellis discussed how best to select local counsel. She made a number of good points but I thought I would emphasize three of them. First, the lawyer you select needs to have sufficient proficiency in English for them to be able…
Ideally, you want your law firms to submit proposed budgets and your in-house responsible attorney to critique them. You want the in-house lawyer to try to drive the law firm’s costs to the lowest level commensurate with responsible representation. To expect that discipline by your lawyer, it is clear to…
Terry Crum, a director at Deloitte Touche, is quoted in Law Firm Inc., Vol. 5, Sept. 2007 at 27, on the subject of savings by law departments from their e-billing systems. Crum says that with e-billing “a client can save 15-18 percent of its outside counsel spend.” No way, Crum!…
A piece in the Harvard Bus. Rev., Vol. 85, Sept. 2007 at 77, explains several good ideas for when an inside lawyer negotiates terms of a representation with a law-firm partner. Share information and encourage reciprocity. After you explain the ground rules – “I will start and you will follow…
Many law departments insist that an internal business client review the bills of outside counsel for that client’s matters. Someone in the law department will also review the bills, but since the cost is a business cost and will likely be charged back to the client by the law department…