“In 2005, the typical litigation costs for patent infringement suits with less than $1 million at risk was $650,000; with $1 million to $25 million at risk was $2 million; and with $25 million or more at risk was $4.5 million.” This quote regarding the costs to plaintiffs who allege…
A company has just been sued or wants to bring suit or has decided on a transaction. It presents two law firms, each capable of handling the matter, with the facts as they are known and asks for one of them to state how much they will charge to represent…
Rob Vosper, Executive Editor of InsideCounsel, writes in the July 2006 issue, at page 10, that in-house counsel pay law firms’ bills, but the “firms run the show.” As incredibly, he then asserts that “firms know that most in-house lawyers believe it’s more disruptive to replace a firm than to…
This technique does not sound promising to me but it might be worth considering under certain circumstances. If inside lawyers always had to obtain a written sign-off of their superior before they retained outside counsel, it would certainly make them think a bit more before triggering the cost. My reaction…
Based on a survey of attorneys in 369 federal civil cases, a recent article examines the time the litigants spend seeking discovery. Shepard, G. “An empirical study of the effects of pretrial discovery,” International Review of Law and Economics, Vol. 19, at 245-263 (1999). The author shows that defendants increase…
A famous paper, “The Market for ‘Lemons’” by the economist George Akerlof, makes the point that where there is asymmetric information (See my post of Dec. 23, 2005 on asymmetry of information and outside counsel.), such as what a car seller knows and potential car buyers don’t, it can hobble…
Every requirement of a law department to some degree changes how its law firms operate. Monthly billing on each matter, to mention one trivial example, influences a firm’s timekeeping, accounting, and billing. More significantly, aggressive law departments can demand significant changes in the operations of their law firms. In various…
I have run across a number of them, and welcome other examples: (1) bolster your IT support (See my post of Oct. 22, 2005 about managers from both sides meeting.), (2) provide access to documents (See my post of Oct. 31, 2005 about JennerNet.), (3) offer CLE training, (4) provide…
A slide from a presentation by Henry Walker, Chief Litigation Counsel for BellSouth teases with the bullet “Monthly High Expense Case Reviews.” It is likely that the largest portion of a law department’s outside counsel spend goes to its so-called “major cases” (See my post of Nov. 15, 2005 on…
Periodically, inside and outside counsel need to revise the budget for a matter, and the law department should then revise its matter management system to show the new budget figure. Unless there is an audit trail or the revised budget does not over-write the original budget, it will be impossible…