Does the size of a law department correlate with the number of lawyers in the major firms that law department retains? I hypothesize that the bigger the department the larger the law firms it pays the most. In other words, for a group of law departments, find out from each…
For law firms to charge out its lawyers on a daily rate, sometimes called a per diem, is not an arrangement much talked about. Why? Per diems could be like blended billing rates (See my post of June 13, 2006 on blended rates compared to effective billing rates.) in that…
Emerson Electric Co.’s legal department often needs advice about shipping regulations. One of its law firms, Bryan Cave, developed software that runs on its website. The program asks the Emerson Electric lawyers who use it a number of questions about the regulatory situation and then produces either an answer or…
In 2006, the winner of the Financial Times Innovative Lawyers contest was Addleshaw Goddard. That UK law firm produces “an employment channel — a 24-hour-a-day online television feed that allows clients to train and educate their staff on important aspects of personnel and employment law.” No more about the high-tech…
About 80 years ago, a linguist named Zipf found that “the” — the most used English word — occurred about twice as often as “of” (second place), about three times as often as “and” (third) and so on. Others have found similar relationships between the size and frequency of earthquakes…
From the Canadian Corporate Counsel Association survey of its members for the 2007 In-House Corporate Counsel Barometer, at 28, comes this quote in connection with how many law firm departments have terminated a law firm in the past year. “Three in ten in-house corporate counsel work in organizations that have…
From the Canadian Corporate Counsel Association survey of its members for the 2007 In-House Corporate Counsel Barometer, at 25, comes data on considerations law department lawyers have regarding the choice of outside counsel. The usual desiderata lead the list, such as responsiveness, specialization, depth of experience, and existing relationships. Three…
I don’t think so. What matters is whether the particular lawyer or set of lawyers retained can accomplish what the law department needs that the department is willing to pay. If the expected (and eventually, the actual) price is acceptable, then whether the firm produces gushing bonanzas each year or…
When law departments place all their work in an area with a single firm for a period of time, or when departments ask for law firms to hold their billing rates constant, or when departments choose a panel of firms for certain services, the departments decide the period of the…
In the Canadian Corporate Counsel Association survey of its members for the 2007 In-House Corporate Counsel Barometer, at 12, one question asked the respondents to check as many as apply of 10 cost-saving measures their law department had implemented over the previous two years. Below are quoted the choices with…