Once a law department has converged its law firms and designated a handful of them as preferred counsel, entitled to certain kinds of work and volume over a period of time in return for beneficial fee arrangements and other investments, one can imagine these arrangements encrusting, like stalagmites, unwanted complacency.…
A year has passed; law firms raise their billing rates by law school year. This puts paid to claims by law departments that they manage experience and costs. (See my post of Nov. 21, 2005 arguing that firms need to show productivity increases.) Instead, what if law departments defined levels…
Law departments that conscientiously set and enforce matter budgets with their outside counsel fare better, I believe, in the struggle against creeping outside costs. (See my posts in 2005 of March 24 proposing an approach and Nov. 6 on Dominos.) But, that being said, the pesky details of establishing and…
Fixed charges by law firms are not limited to entire matters ($30,000 to complete this leaseback) or groups of matters (all our product liability cases in Ohio in 2006). Rather, a set charge can apply for a particular stage of activity, such as due diligence in an acquisition or until…
I believe that bidding a single lawsuit competitively presents more challenges, to both the law department and the bidding firms, than bidding a portfolio of cases over time (See my posts of Oct. 31, 2005 on the competitive bidding process and Nov. 8, 2005 on giving data on hours, not…
A point in an article about intellectual property work deserves attention (IP Law & Bus., Vol. 5, Nov. 2005 at 22). Based on a survey of Fortune 500 companies, “a new IP chief [lawyer] translates into new outside counsel less than a third of the time, or in five of…
In a recent interview, the head of litigation for BellSouth (Henry Walker) shares his observation that “the faster the cases are resolved, the lower the outside counsel fees.” (From Jan. 2005 materials of ACC at 6, provided at a conference organized by the ABA Section of Business Law and ACC,…
A good practice for law departments that negotiate with their law firms a fixed fee for handling certain work is to protect both sides with a collar. A typical collar might agree that if the actual fees of the law firm are more than 15 percent above the fixed-fee payment,…
A recent article explained that Cisco’s law department uses “the internet to cherry-pick the best from hundreds of different firms and then manage large, disparate teams of lawyers.” Legal Week, Vol. 7, Nov. 10, 2005 at 62. A stark contrast to convergence, this technique of melding the best team from…
Wal-Mart announced its diversity initiative at a conference attended by representatives of its top 100 firms, reminding us of a law department’s power to bring together its key firms. If you want to announce e-billing, roll out budget forms, explain task-based billing, showcase promoted lawyers, explain your new guidelines, plead…