An article in ManagingPartner, Vol. 7, Oct. 5, 2004, mentions a situation in which the law department of a major company invited six firms to visit headquarters for a day. Only two firms showed up. “The others couldn’t see the point in giving up of the day to come and…
The law departments of 18 “local authorities” in the East Midlands of Britain created a partnership, operating under the name of EM Law Share, and appointed four external counsel. Legal Week, Vol. 8, April 27, 2006 at 4 discloses this unusual collective arrangement. Teaming together, these law departments can obtain…
According to a post on Allocature (May 31, 2006), “78.4% [don’t you love the precision?] of Australian in-house counsel do not track internal legal costs – therefore most costs are not passed back to other business units. Only 6% of Australian in-house counsel charge business units, and if they do,…
Some law firms with multiple offices may set lower billing rates for lawyers in lower cost cities, especially if they pay lawyers in those cities less than they pay lawyers of the same level elsewhere. If so, a law department could arbitrage the rate differences and push the law firm…
A presentation by a lawyer from TD Bank Financial Group explains that the Group measures the value obtained from outside counsel by their rates, their efficiency, and their “file management,” which “is the single most important factor.” File (matter) management concerns how a law firm staffs a matter and how…
I erred; I have misused the term “blended billing rate.” In previous posts about that term I have noted the difference between law firms (Aug. 21, 2005), the unclear connection between it and cost reduction (Sept. 5, 2005), and its correlation to firm size (Sept. 10, 2005). In each post,…
Interviewed by Managing Intellectual Property, Feb. 2006, the legal affairs director of the Chinese company Haier offers another wrinkle on the old chestnut At the initial stage of cooperation, because we do not know the counsel well, we would choose a law firm rather than the counsel, because the firm…
The wrong question to ask at the start of a project is “should this project be done by inside or outside counsel?” according to co-authors the ACCA Docket, Vol. 18, May 2000 at 4 (Stephen J. Friedman and C. Evan Stewart). These two experienced general counsel assert that this is…
After a review of the usual-suspect techniques for outside cost control, two authors conclude with what they believe is the crucial driver: “the most important variable is the quality and experience of inside counsel,” ACCA Docket, Vol. 18, May 2000 at 4 (Stephen J. Friedman and C. Evan Stewart). Note…
My beef with billing-rate discounts is that law departments cannot know whether they are getting steak or mad cow disease. With discounts, if they be smaller plates, will some people just go back to the buffet more? Why should such a blunderbuss technique be esteemed so highly? If billing rates…