Oracle describes in a release how the legal auditing firm of Stuart Maue Mitchell & James implemented Oracle BI to help it prepare reports for clients. What amazed me is the number of clients and the volume of invoices that firm has reportedly processed. According to the press release, “The…
An item in Legal Week, March 29, 2007 at 6, outlines changes in General Electric’s revamped procedure to select its US panel of advisors. A number of those changes deserve special mention. GE shrank the total panel of 94 by 32 law firms, “ditching 44 firms and adding 12 new…
An item in Legal Week, March 22, 2007 at 3, mentions the claims handler for Lloyd’s of London, Xchanging Claims Services. The survey “is part of a wider initiative by the company to create a database that will be accessible to all members of Lloyds …” (See my post of…
According to the 2006 ACC/Serengeti Managing Outside Counsel Survey, as highlighted in ACC Docket, April 2007 at 14, “average reported savings from using matter management systems was 11% of outside legal spending.” Amazing!, but true? Questions tumble all over that factoid. What was the median figure? Of the “hundreds of…
According to a survey by Butler Rubin Saltarelli & Boyd, reported by InsideCounsel, April 2007 at 54, the 162 readers of that magazine who responded online in May 2006 gave the edge to smaller law firms. When given the statement “Smaller law firms are more willing to explore alternative fee…
Susan Hackett, the general counsel of ACC, has recently thrown down the gauntlet: associates at elite law firms are paid way too much and sensibly outraged general counsel should spurn them and their profligate firms. She fulminates against the recent jump in associate pay and its tsunami effect on rates…
If many inside counsel could go to a web site and evaluate the performance of their outside counsel on matters, everyone in-house would benefit. Like Zagat ratings of restaurants, the collective experience of the crowd would boost everyone’s knowledge (See my post of July 21, 2005 for an early reference…
Diversity & The Bar, Vol. 9, March/April 2007 at 31, describes the NMLG as “an alliance of 16 certified and AV-rated, full-service minority-owned law firms.” Founded in 2003, its members include Miami-based Adorno & Yoss – “the largest certified minority-owned firm in the United States.” The firms are located in…
Ben Heineman, in Corp. Counsel, Vol. 14, April 2007 at 87, maintains that law firms should understand the whole company that is their client and that ample material is available to tutor them. “There is a large amount of public information about corporations, if outside lawyers are willing to collect…
When they put prospective matters out to competitive bid, such as all lawsuits in a certain region, most law departments exclude some kinds of matters from the scope of the services. For example, class actions might be outside the bundle. Many law firms are intensely curious about the amount and…