Two years ago I catalogued ten reasons not to stoop to competitive selections of outside counsel (See my post of Oct. 10, 2008: reasons to oppose competitive bids.). Still strongly in favor of that method, I recognize that opponents might put forth additional reasons. Perhaps in a follow-up post I…
The always-stimulating newsletter of Laurence Simons reports that UK firm CMS Cameron McKenna has unveiled a “new marketing campaign [that] includes fixed fee options, discounts for placing all your legal work with the practice and, perhaps most frightening of the lot, an invitation to ‘pay what you think the work…
In-house managers of outside counsel want as few lawyers as possible at a firm doing their work. The benefits of a core of dedicated lawyers are well known: familiarity, and competence, confidence. Work with a small group and you work more effectively (See my post of Aug. 8, 2006: core…
Budgets of time – two months to complete the debt offering – may be less susceptible to gaming and slippage than budgets of cost – $85,000 to complete the debt offering. On the other hand, cost is more in the control of the firm than time. The mean variance from…
It is too easy to adorn RFPs with questions that do not in the crunch make a palpable difference to the in-house counsel who evaluate the RFPs and choose firms. Experience, depth of talent, subjective impressions of quality, and cost structure easily and consistently push other considerations out of the…
Although much touted, serious doubts exist in my mind about the efficacy of so-called institutional knowledge of law firms. I have no doubt that individual partners who work on a series of matters over several years with a company come to understand chunks of the company’s history, culture, senior leaders,…
I am not trying to provoke. My logic is that partners may sense that the less effective a legal department, the more it needs outside legal assistance. Obviously, lack of internal capability in specialized areas of law results in more reliance on outside counsel. But even lack of internal operational…
A book review in the Admin. Sci. Q., Sept. 2003 at 525, praises Emmanuel Lazega, The collegial phenomenon: the social mechanisms of cooperation among peers in a corporate law partnership (Oxford 2001). The review raised the question for me of how sensible is it for lawyers in a legal department…
Corp. Counsel, June 2010 at 72, explains that Xerox farms out the work on its 1,000 patent applications to several law firms (See my post of Aug. 17, 2010: HP decides to move patent work in-house.). “When Xerox needs to pick a firm to handle a patent application, it looks…
Investment bank fees and elite law firm fees share a trait: altitude. In fact, the British competition agency, the Office of Fair Trading, has started an investigation into investment bank fees for equity underwriting. The Economist, June 19, 2010 at 80, takes a look at the inquiry and offers some…