An article in the Economist, Sept. 12, 2009 at 82, cites projections that the lawyers and others who will be awarded fees in the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers might reap nearly $1 billion, “well above the $757 million they received after Enron’s demise, the record for a bankruptcy case.” Then…
The question is, how can a general counsel know what a bedrock cost is to handle a set of services? I have advised previously not to tell firms in an RFP what you spent historically, because that will frame their thinking around the numbers you provide. I thought it a…
My previous posts about the ACC Value Challenge have presented various facets of it, but not fundamentally challenged its value, so to speak (See my post of Oct. 22, 2008: normal fees for high quality work; Oct. 19, 2008: complaints about law firm associates; Nov. 21, 2008: deconstruction of its…
These ten questions to answer will help you shape a successful secondment. They come from Mark Prebble, Managing In-House Legal Services: Providing High Value Support for Your Organisation (Thorogood 2009) at 73 . What should the outcome of the secondment be in terms of benefit for the department, its secondee,…
Let’s tap on the shoulder some of the dancers that contend for the honor of the most effective way to lower spending on outside counsel. The winning dancer pirouettes at the end. Sourcing and procurement techniques. No matter how skillfully a legal department, perhaps working with sourcing brethren, selects counsel…
Having considered the infrequent reasons why legal departments select firms in Asia, let’s look at the infrequent concerns the same survey respondents expressed about dealing with law firms (See my post of Sept. 9, 2009: long-tail reasons for selecting firms.). The bottom ten of the 16 total reasons were “work…
A survey conducted by Asian-Counsel e-edition, Vol. 7, July/Aug. at 26, published findings about the factors which most influenced the respondents’ choice of outside counsel. Many times I have written about the leading factors (expertise, responsiveness, fees, reputation and the like); only rarely have I mentioned the long tail of…
An article in Strategies: J. of Legal Marketing, Vol. 11, Aug. 2009 at 4, offers thoughts by Susan Hackett Hackett@acc.com about the ACC Value Challenge. Along the way she explains that the initiative is trying to move away from the billable hour, and then continues with a sentence that seems…
For many years, and possibly continuing today, Law Office Management & Administration Report (LOMAR) published a cost-of-living index for about ten major US cities. As I recall it, the monthly table used prices in New York City on a certain date as the index of 100, and showed the other…
We too often resort to factually emaciated RFPs, doling out facts on an as needed basis, restricting the questions that can be asked, and limiting due diligence. Telling the firms who are proposing too much takes time, runs risks, and leads to little gain, supporters of limited information would argue.…