A chapter in Robert L. Haig, Ed., Successful Partnering Between Inside and Outside Counsel (Thomson Reuters/West 2009 Supplement), Sec. 78:21.20, describes a long-term relationship between ServiceMaster and Hinshaw & Culbertson. In 2002, the company and the firm agreed that Hinshaw & Culbertson would handle work for a subsidiary based in…
As described in the ACC Docket, Vol. 26, Nov. 2008 at 101, the core law firms of Pfizer – those that make up its P3 group – submit periodic “value reports.” In them firms “identify their respective contributions in the area of savings and benefit to the company.” That’s all…
“Fixed fee arrangements are fundamentally flawed. As soon as you discuss them with the firm, the numbers increase to include the premium and contingency, and hey presto, you’re paying more than you should have in the first place.” This cynical generalization glowers out of Legal Strat. Rev., Summer 2009 at…
“The accuracy of economic forecasts diminishes in months into the future.” William A. Sherden, The Fortune Sellers: The Big Business of Buying and Selling Predictions (John Wiley 1998) at 63, goes further: “The average forecast errors percentages for real GNP growth were 45 percent at the beginning of the year…
“Corporate Executive Board research reveals that reducing legal staff can actually lead to considerable increased legal costs. Companies with fewer in-house lawyers tend to spend twice as much as their peers with more lawyers.” I suppose if a department is denuded, its client enterprise will pay more to outside counsel.…
A law department can hire two five-hundred lawyer firms for similar services, paying one an effective rate of $450 an hour and paying the other an effective rate of $300 an hour. The difference between the two firms’ costs on a per-hour basis is 50 percent. But I doubt that…
More than a score of posts on this blog survey the interplay between the amount paid law firms and the perceived worth of the services paid for. Roughly half of the comments pertain to specific billing rates and amounts billed in light of the perceived value (See my post of…
A citation in Robert Haig, Ed., Successful Partnering Between Inside and Outside Counsel(Thomson Reuters/West 2009 Supp.), Vol. 1, Chapter 4 at §4:3, left me perplexed. The article mentioned in that chapter, presumably approvingly, discusses bringing more legal work in-house. The author of that article, a former general counsel, wrote in…
Pfizer, wielding its mighty P3 program, likes to squeeze from its preferred law firms higher discounts the more it uses them. “To effectively share in the benefits of economies of scale, we [Pfizer] implemented a tiered-volume discount structure, with the level of discounts increasing as firms receive higher volumes of…
A slim book sent me for review from Abacus Law humorously describes 35 dangerous myths lawyers in private practice might succumb to. Three of them, at least, pertain to services provide to legal departments. I have refashioned summaries of them below to clarify their importance to in-house attorneys, but essentially…