During the summer of 2005, Bottomline Technologies, the provider of eXchange, surveyed the Fortune 1000 companies and AM Best 200 insurers. Of the 1,892 individuals sent e-mail invitations to participate, more than 10 percent responded. Thomas Gaillard of Bottomline reported some of the results at ACC’s 2005 Annual Meeting. The…
The UK is on the verge of allowing law firms to be bought by non-lawyer entities or to go public. Unfettered by any knowledge beyond that, let me extrapolate into the future with some questions. With newfound wealth, will some partners chuck in the practice, and thereby weaken the firms?…
From a large, web-based survey conducted for LexisNexis Martindale-Hubble (Counsel to Counsel, Nov. 2005 at 17) came an interesting nuance. When law departments were selecting a new firm, they rated expertise, client service, reputation in that order, with fees and budgeting in sixth place — which in turn were more…
An article aimed at insurers (Claims Magazine, Oct. 2002 by Tewabe Joro Ayenew) speaks to insurance carriers handling large claims portfolios. But its lessons apply more broadly, and it unearths a provocative metric. In brief, the article concludes that as to two common efforts – legal bill auditing by third…
As law departments put out to bid portfolios of legal services that can reach tens of millions of dollars, larger law firms – with the capacity, reach, infrastructure, and capital to handle boatloads of work – will be the odds on favorites to be chosen. Convergence efforts by clients, therefore,…
A wary sentiment appears to prevail among senior in-house lawyers regarding use of law firms within networks of law firms (See my post of May 9, 2005 listing 12 networks.) If the law firm the law department has been using refers international work to a member of a network the…
As reported in the Economist (Vol. 377, Oct. 22, 2005 at 12), “Microsoft is among the companies most frequently sued for patent infringement: it is currently involved in 32 patent disputes, and spends close to $100m a year in legal costs.” (See my post of Nov. 3, 2005 where Microsoft…
This finding came from a survey of LexisNexis Martindale-Hubble (Counsel to Counsel, Nov. 2005 at 17) to which 635 in-house counsel responded, 461 of which were from the United States. The summary strongly suggests that the “matters” in which CEOs intrude are adversarial, such as law suits, regulatory proceedings, or…
A press release about the 2005 ACC/Serengeti survey of law departments mentioned that one of retention terms it asked law departments about was “minimum experience requirements for associates working on matters.” I respect the survey for asking about this, but such a requirement strikes me as a blunderbuss approach. Doesn’t…
Why is it that the so-called generalist lawyers who support a business unit tend to use outside counsel more sparingly than do specialist lawyers, such as intellectual property or employment/labor lawyers, who turn to them frequently? Wouldn’t it be expected that if you’re a specialist, you should know your area…