Corp. Counsel, June 2010 at 18, contains an interview of Susan Blount, the general counsel of Prudential. She explains the nascent Inclusion Initiative. The “11 large corporations that have signed on have committed to spending a portion of their legal budgets with women- and minority-owned law firms.” The Inclusion pool…
One post begets another, so having just seen off six ways of thinking that favor alternative fees (See my post of June 2, 2010: mental models conducive to non-hourly billing.), my marginalia jottings came up with three more. Profit model of law firm – partners need to reorient themselves and…
“To this day, we are surprised at how many lawyers delegate the coding of their time entirely to their administrative assistants without any attempt to ensure that the resulting output is accurate or useful.” These are the plaintive words of General Electric’s Brackett Denniston and Alex Dimitrief.who updated Bob Haig’s…
Data comes recently from a survey that had 367 general counsel who responded and whose company had averaged at least one lawsuit per year for five years. “On average, respondent companies were plaintiffs in 18 percent of their cases, defendants in 70 percent of cases, and non-party respondents in 12…
“Our vote for the next important step [in law firm billing] is user-friendly Intranet sites on which clients can secure real-time access to their lawyers’ billing entries.” Part of the advocacy sections on task-based billing, in updated chapter 14 on billing written by Brackett Denniston and Alex Dimitrief of General…
Bob Haig’s Successful Partnering series has an extensively updated chapter 14 on billing written by General Electric’s Brackett Denniston and Alex Dimitrief. Sections 3 and 4 run nine pages in support of task-based billing. The authors advocate it and see the use of code sets widely: “the decidedly majority view…
Behind selection of the key partner to handle a matter, the most effective way to moderate costs is for thoughtful in-house lawyers to shape, narrow and target the legal services provided by the partner. “Take only those five depositions.” “Don’t draft or negotiate over the risks of the joint venture’s…
My friend Bob Haig, the indefatigable editor of West’s Successful Partnering between Inside and Outside Counsel, kindly sent me the updated chapter 14 on billing. Written by Brackett Denniston and Alex Dimitrief of General Electric, it summarizes nicely the current state of play on law firm billing. In Section 2,…
Preliminary findings from the 2010 Real Rate Report to be issued by CT TyMetrix in September disabuse us further of the notion that law firms maintain standard billing rates for individual timekeepers. A handout at the SuperConference about the Report drew on more than $4 billion of bills and 3,448…
CT TyMetrix recently announced its 2010 Real Rate Report which will issue in September. Meanwhile, a handout at the SuperConference provided data on the 2009 median, weighted, partner hourly rate in the United States. Based on more than $4 billion of bills covering 17,548 law firm partners, all weighted by…