When meteorologists predict the weather for a month, they often use one of the so-called naïve forecasts. What the average spend during June for the last five years – the counterpart of the climate of the region and the basis for the naïve forecast – stands as a first-cut forecast.…
The supplement to the ACC Docket, May 2012 at 8, charts the career of Brigitte Catellier, Vice President, Legal Affairs and Secretary of Astral Media Inc. Early in her career, while at a large Canadian firm, she was asked by one of her clients, Culinar, to take on the tasks…
An excellent article in the ACC Docket, May 2012 at 32, describes the Litigation Investment Model of Reckitt Benckiser. Essentially, the model puts law firms at risk for their profit margin when they represent that company. And, those profits are lucrative. For the 200 largest law firms in the United…
Realistic in-house counsel accept that the accuracy of a law firm’s budget declines precipitously the farther out it goes (See my post of Aug. 4, 2009: use a funnel metaphor for budgets; Oct. 22, 2008: build for flexibility rather than strive for prediction; July 9, 2009: obtain budget scenarios instead…
On a panel recently, a speaker urged the attendees, all from law departments, to request from their outside counsel what he called an “activity budget.” Rather than a money projection of what the firm’s services were expected to cost for the budget period, the information he requests is what the…
A column by Richard Stock for the Canadian Corporate Counsel Association’s quarterly, Leading Corporate Counsel, Fall 2010, provides a rule-of-thumb for when to consider in-sourcing legal work. Stock writes that “a minimum of 600 external hours must be in-sourced to cost justify a new position in the legal department.” What…
When embroiled in a law suit, many times inside lawyers ask their litigation counsel: “What are our chances?” Define successful outcome as you will, they want the partner to give the odds. The experienced and wise litigation partner replies, reluctantly, “Seventy percent.” That estimate is a subjective probability, according to…
Five years ago a large-scale survey of in-house attorneys tracked how those attorneys said they received legal advice from outside lawyers. They had five choices and were asked to select the two most common methods. Recently, Deloitte revisited that question in a similarly large survey and found a marked swing.…
At a panel hosted this month by Canada’s Heenan Blaikie, a leading general counsel told the audience that “a law firm’s bill is its best opportunity for marketing its services.” He suggested that the bill can make clear the value the firm delivered that month and, indeed, give some insights…
A recent survey of in-house counsel, reported in Deloitte’s Global Corporate Counsel Report 2011 at 17, gave the three most common responses when they were asked to specify why they retained outside counsel: “Need for greater specialist expertise,” “need for additional legal resources,” and “complexity of the legal work.” Far…