Recently I put myself in the shoes of an opponent of competitive bids to select firms and came up with six arguments, in quotes below. Let me now unlace those shoes (See my post of Sept. 22, 2010: opposition to competitive selections.). “The process risks disclosure of too much sensitive…
All general counsel complain that their budget this year is swollen by some anomalous and uncontrollable charges. Their company bought another company and whacking big legal fees came with that acquisition. The plant closing of four years ago erupted discrimination claims. A crazy class action came out of the blue.…
Firms bill more when settlement discussions are underway. That is the belief of some in-house litigators. When a responsible partner realizes that the trough may soon be emptied by resolution of the case, lots of thirsty timekeepers crowd in to drink deeply. Alternatively and legitimately, the time immediately before settlement…
The former general counsel of Bombardier urges in the ACC Docket, Sept. 2010 at Supp. 7, a link in addition to relationship partners between a legal department and its primary law firms. Daniel Desjardins “believes that it is equally important – for both the firm and the law department –…
Rather than paraphrase, here is the surprising quote from an interview with the former general counsel of Bombardier: The Canadian company’s GC “requires key firms that work with his law department [to] invest in whatever systems they need to provide the Bombardier law department with the data and information it…
Serengeti’s survey data from 2009 shows that “the use of law firm extranets decreased again this year with only 8.7% of the respondents using an extranet provided by at least one of their firms (continuing to decline each year from a high of 30% in 2003).” The explanation given in…
Evaluations of long-serving law firms by inside lawyers who work with them inevitably shift to high scores and little differentiation in results. If the lawyers did not like the firm, they would have used them less or not at all, barring political over-rides that mandated use. It becomes rating your…
Here is a speculative suggestion. Double blind evaluate a few matter budgets of outside counsel and the outcomes of those matters. Follow the bouncing red ball below. A lawyer who was not involved in the matter should rate the success of the outcome, from what was reasonably known and anticipatable…
A piece in the NYSBA J., Sept. 2010 at 28, by Silvia Hodges, includes the ubiquitous sentence: “Ever-increasing cost pressure in companies has shifted the power from the law firms to the clients.” Wait a minute. What about management skills increasing among in-house lawyers? What about greater transparency in data…
Wicker Park Group last year announced that it had surveyed general counsel at major companies and found that “100 percent of respondents visited a law firm’s website when evaluating and purchasing legal services.” That unanimous finding boggles me but given the infrequency with which general counsel get involved in the…