Yes, hourly billing rates near $1,000 draw the ire of in-house lawyers. But at an Ark conference this week, a general counsel panel made the point that general counsel often wish they could get more time from the very same, expensive partner. It is that lawyer’s judgment and ability to…
Everyone spends most of their time discussing expensive, large-scale matters staffed with platoons of lawyers, with the apotheosis being the “bet-the-company” lawsuit. Rare events, those, and thank goodness (See my post of Feb. 28, 2006 chastising the over-use of that term.). It occurred to me at a recent Ark conference…
I modified the header from a quote in an article to be published by Mitt Regan, Co-Director of the Center for the Study of the Legal Profession. The article discusses offshoring legal services (at 113) and whether distinguished firms fear to tarnish their reputations if they stoop to using offshore…
Whatever a clever law firm devises, competitors will soon learn and sooner thereafter adopt. This inability to capture the major rewards may discourage law firms from incurring the cost of developing innovations. This obstacle comes from an article to be published by Mitt Regan, Co-Director of the Center for the…
Consider this quote from a law review article. “Furthermore, the allocation of responsibility has shifted over time, as junior partners now do what senior partners used to, senior associates do work formerly done by junior partners, junior associates the tasks that used to be done by senior associates, paralegals taking…
A survey of corporate lawyers conducted by Serengetti asked them to scale their own resistance to alternative fee arrangements (AFA) and their perception of law firm resistance to AFAs. On the scale given, a 1 means “no resistance”; a 3 presumably means moderate resistance; and a 5 a “great deal…
Very few general counsel try to have their key law firms cooperate with each other. The exceptions that prove the rule, notably DuPont, don’t share their methods to evaluate the degree and usefulness of their firms sharing information and playing well in the sandbox. It would be possible for a…
Squire, Sanders & Dempsey offers it clients, at no charge, “periodic detailed case reviews by senior litigation leadership.” As presented in the ACC Docket, March 2010 at 10, “litigation practice leaders and others periodically meet with case team leaders – at no additional cost to clients – to discuss case…
Not one to mince words, the general counsel of Cisco, Mark Chandler, dropped that grenade on an audience primarily of law firm partners at the recent Georgetown Law Conference on Law Firm Evolution. He explained that efforts by partners to persuade him to hire one of their colleagues “have more…
An unpublished paper by Michele DeStafano Beardslee and three co-authors at the Georgetown Conference on the Future of Law Firms at 4, emphasizes the baleful effects of information asymmetry regarding the quality of service provided by law firms. She takes the perspective of an economist and stresses that “credence goods”…