Of the 97 lawyers in WellPoint’s legal department, 27 of them make up its litigation department. That nearly one out of three lawyers in that department litigate puts it at the very highest end of the range of litigation lawyers as a percentage of all lawyers (See my post of…
The matter cost-control firm Legalbill surveyed some 16,000 lawyers who use its matter management software at one or more of his law department clients. More than 600 responded. One question described a typical invoice and asked the lawyers: “On average how many different UTBMS litigation codes will you use?” Roughly…
This blog tries not to market particular offerings of services or products, but this post cites one to describe an approach that law departments ought to know about. A glossy of Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman describes PEARL™ — Pillsbury’s E-Discovery Alliance of Resource Leaders. The firm has strategic alliances with…
Expensive litigation and a cost-oriented arrangement led me to make several points. As described in Litigation 2011 at 40, Medela, a Swiss-based company that is the world’s leading maker of breast pumps, hired Dechert to defend it in a 2006 class action. Three years later, “with Dechert’s fees piling up…
At a SuperConference session on litigation management, a lawyer from CapitalOne said that his department allocates a portion of its spend on outside counsel to firms that are not on the preferred partner manifest. He said “It’s partly training them and partly assessing them to see if they might become…
For the most part, the general counsel’s team can and does decide which law firm makes sense for a particular matter. Sometimes, it must be admitted, that exclusive privilege bends a little – or a lot – if others with more power or influence want to direct the retention. My…
Robert Pozen practiced law, among his many distinguished careers in business, government and academia. He was a partner at the Washington, D.C., law firm of Caplin & Drysdale, where he led its banking/securities department from 1981 to 1986. Pozen wrote an article in the Harvard Bus. Rev., May 2011 at…
A speaker from Baxter Laboratories said at a SuperConference panel that they have instituted some disciplines to keep matter budgets relevant. Every month outside counsel must certify that the matter is on budget and inside counsel must do something similar to show that the budget is on track. Certification can…
“A claim is said to be objective if its truth or falsity can be settled as a matter of fact independent of anybody’s attitudes, feelings or evaluations; it is subjective if it cannot. For example, the claim that Van Gogh died in France is epistemically objective. But the claim that…
When I heard this statement from a keynote speaker, I felt the urge to stop, drop and role. I was fired up, smoke coming out of my ears! The statement fails utterly to recognize the huge differences that can follow from a cost-plus operation by law firms where everything spent…