A survey of French law departments during the fall of 2010 asked whether they had put in place a panel of law firms and negotiated fee arrangement with those firms. From responses of 91 general counsel, two thirds of them had done so (69%). Convergence and discounts have become a…
If one thing costs more than another, similar thing, that fact alone “turns on the neurons in the medial orbitofrontal cortex, an area of the brain associated with pleasure feelings.” Eduardo Porter, The Price of Everything: Solving the mystery of why we pay what we do (Portfolio/Penguin 2011) at 20,…
Georgetown University Law Center’s Center for the Study of the Legal Profession coordinated yet another highly successful conference last week. Among the wide-ranging presentations about trends in the delivery of corporate legal services that Professor Mitt Regan and his colleagues hosted, one featured Lisa Hart, the CEO of Acritas, who…
Paul Lippe, muse and master of Legal OnRamp, wrote a piece about the top ten ways to reduce legal costs. Number ten particularly inspired me to write. “10) Make no small plans. Most cost-savings approaches in law amount to no more than tinkering—arguing whether two versus three associates should attend…
Nat Slavin, co-founder of the Wicker Park Group, wrote extensively on his blog about the Wall Street Journal article (Feb. 23rd, page 1) on $1,000 an hour law firm partners. The article evidently disparaged such high priced legal talent, charging them with “taking advantage of companies.” Nat correctly pointed out…
A paper on patent litigation in the semiconductor industry includes an unusual metric: “chip design firms enforce roughly 4 out of every 100 patents they own,” a rate described later as comparable for biotechnology firms but somewhat lower than for financial firms. The paper by Bronwyn Hall and Rosemary Ziedonis…
As I contemplated the enormity of DLAPiper, soon to top the law firm league tables of size, and other legal leviathans whose annual fees exceed $1 billion dollars, it struck me that many corporate clients can only aspire to such earnings. As a proof, in my 2010 benchmark report there…
My friend, Pete Benedetti of doeLegal passed on to me an interesting item. It will rankle general counsel. Legal Week reported that DLA Piper, soon to be the largest law firm in the world, has distributed to partners a 2011-2014 strategic plan that sets a minimum fee requirement for new…
A fascinating categorization by Steven Johnson puts 200 of the most important innovations and scientific breakthroughs from the past 600 years into four categories. In his book, Where Good Ideas Come From – The Natural History of Innovation (Riverhead 2010) at 218 et seq., he breaks them into market-driven and…
“Twice a year, Pfizer gives each firm a report card – and then grades them on how well they take the feedback.” In roughly those words the general counsel of Pfizer, Amy Schulman, described the feedback her department’s 19 alliance law firms receive – and how they are graded on…