So-called maturity models imply best practices and a desirable progression along a ladder of improvement (See my post of May 15, 2009: model for ethics and compliance function.). You can get a taste of one for leadership development in the Harvard Bus. Rev., April 2011 at 133. Its bottom rung…
Abbott Laboratories was clobbered on a patent infringement case, a smack-down jury verdict in June 2009 for $1.67 billion. The article about the ensuring appeal, in Corp. Counsel, July 2011 at 21, vividly conveys the pressure Abbott’s general counsel was under as a result of the huge adverse award. The…
“Ariba Inc., the maker of one of the main reverse-auction software tools, claims that around 40% of today’s market for legal work – a threefold increase from just a few years ago – is contracted through electronic, online means, most of which involve a reverse auction, according to Sunda Kamakshisundaran,…
As the primary source of data on legal spend, both inside and outside, the accounts payable function services many law departments. Especially small departments, one and two lawyers, turn to their finance group for what totals and breakouts they can obtain. It is the stand-in for matter management software or…
From the standpoint of a law department, you could say the ultimate value-based arrangement obligates payment only when and if the law firm accomplishes just what the department wants. With inventions suitable for patent protection, what could be better for a law department than to pay the law firm only…
Bill Henderson, Director of the Center on the Global Legal Profession and a Professor of Law at Maurer School of Law, co-authored an article in the ABA J., July 2011 at 41. The authors credit three interconnected forces with testing and stressing the legal market. None of them fit from…
Your law department has used a firm satisfactorily for years, but nevertheless seeks bids from it and other law firms to handle certain matters. The incumbent firm comes back to you with all kinds of new ideas and potential concessions or advantages. How do you respond? Some inside lawyers might…
The other day I heard an argument new to me for an extended fixed-fee period. The period was three years. Three years seemed right to this general counsel because law firms could not afford to run at a loss (low-ball) for such an extended period. For one year, they might…
A few days ago I ventured to list in order of respectability why legal departments don’t aggressively control costs of their law firms (See my post of July 21, 2011: 14 reasons.). I am gratified two readers added their thoughts. John Conlon pointed out “that many of the corporate in-house…
As I came up with this list, it seemed useful to put them in declining order of legitimacy. In other words, the first few make sense, toward the end they make poor excuses. The lawyers like the services they get from the firms and feel the value delivered for the…