A piece in Managing Ptr., July-Aug. 2010 at 49, explains how a major British law firm places its clients into a 2 x 2 portfolio matrix. The matrix sorts clients by attractiveness, which means either to strategically invest in them or simply maintain them, and by whether the firm has…
Addelshaw Goddard, the UK-based law firm, lance.sapsford@addleshawgoddard.com offers an unusual perquisite for its major clients. According to a piece in Managing Ptr., July-Aug. 2010 at 49, it can “run business simulation events designed to put in-house lawyers in the shoes of their colleagues (managing director, finance director, commercial director) over…
A panel of five general counsel, written about in Strategies, June 2010 at 19, proclaimed the death of traditional techniques to find outside counsel in a particular area or to validate a referral. “All five general counsel agreed that Google searches and a robust online presence have essentially replaced legal…
Sharp Legal Brands – Global Elite (2009) from Acritas at 37, summarizes some of the results of a question about procurement’s involvement when a law department selects law firms. Notably, in most of Asia, involvement of procurement is significantly higher than in the rest of the world, Japan excluded. Second,…
Managers of law departments take it on faith that alternative fee arrangements (billing terms other than straight hourly, AKA AFAs) at least result in better value for money spent if not reduce total external expenditures. Perhaps that credo is illusory. According to Managing Ptr., July-Aug. 2010 at 14, and an…
It is frustrating to lack consensus on such a basic fact as the percentage of fees billed by law firms that are not based on hourly rates, i.e., alternative fee arrangements. AFAs incite a huge amount of publicity, but definitions of it vary, measurements use different methodologies, and interpretations rely…
Sharp Legal Brands – Global Elite (2009) from Acritas at 28,listed eight key service attributes of law firms and asked its hundreds of respondents to rank them. Around 3,000 GCs and other senior buyers of legal services weighed in and by a clear margin, the least important of the service…
One chart in the excellent report by Acritas, Sharp Legal Brands – Global Elite (2009) at 26, gives scores from 12 industries for their law departments’ satisfaction with their most-used firm. The data includes both the average score and the standard deviation of the scores for each industry. What impressed…
One of the questions covered by Acritas in its thoughtful Sharp Legal Brands – Global Elite (2009) at 18 is “What does the term ‘value for money’ mean to you?” They analyzed the answers to the open-ended question from 476 respondents out of “1,000 interviews with the largest and most…
Sharp Legal Brands – Global Elite (2009) from Acritas at 1 contains a scatterplot that shows the “average hourly rate for partner at Most Used Firm.” The median of those rates is around $510 an hour. That figure may be informative as far as it goes but it seems quite…