Legal bill auditors are necessarily pugnacious types and John Toothman is no exception. The website of his firm, The Devil’s Advocate, offers a 28-page document that discusses many aspects of managing outside counsel’s costs. Here’s one of his tough-as-nails ideas (at 11). “To reinforce the importance of the budget, the…
This statement in Canadian Lawyer Inhouse, Vol. 1, April 2006, surprised me. I have written before on engagement letters (aka retention letters) (See my posts of Aug. 24, 2006 that compare inside retention letters to outside counsel guidelines; Sept. 25, 2006 on the integration of retention letters and other guidelines…
The International Legal Technology Association (ILTA) published its 2006 Technology Survey, dated Aug. 2006. The survey received 491 responses from law firms around the world (an average of 90 lawyers each), with 90 percent of them from the US. One question (at page 12) asked the survey respondents to identify…
I dislike the publicity given to findings about how many law departments have “fired” one of their law firms, yet have written frequently on the topic (See my posts of Oct. 30, 2005 on reasons: expensive, silent and stupid; Aug. 28, 2006 on a figure of less than 1% of…
Surveyed in October 2006, 165 chief legal officers (60% from departments with 1-5 lawyers) participated in an Altman Weil/LexisNexis Martindale-Hubble survey. The CLOs preferred method of locating a firm to hire is through references from someone they know. If personal references were not available, the respondents provided some data on…
The website of The Devil’s Advocate contains a 28-page document that discusses many aspects of managing external counsel and their costs. A point made by the document’s author, John Toothman (at 9) makes sense and deserves reflection. Toothman points out that if a law firm can confidently and quickly prepare…
Substantive legal issues impinge on law department management (See my post of Oct. 24, 2005 on a few examples of the intersection.). That is an ironic introduction, because obviously the legal work that needs to be done shapes fundamentally how an effective law department operates. Still, despite having managed to…
George Cunningham, President of the Pelli Group, an experienced consultant and co-author of the recent ABA/LPM book, The Lawyer’s Guide to Records Management and Retention, has agreed to become a contributing co-author on this blog. He will offer his observations from time to time and welcomes all comments or e-mails.
The website of The Devil’s Advocate contains a 28-page document that discusses many aspects of managing external lawyers and their costs. John W. Toothman, the author of the tract, writes about alternative fee arrangements (at 4). Specifically, he comments that for progressive law departments (“Third Wave Legal Management”) “alternatives [to…
A consultant to legal service providers (sometimes referred to as vendors, and here as the cottage industry around law departments), Brad Blickstein has been an astute observer of the law department scene for years. Formerly the president of Corporate Legal Times magazine (now InsideCounsel), Brad will contribute posts from time…