A phrase from a treatise furrowed my brow: “Although in-house legal departments are in competition with law firms, legal departments still remain the primary purchasers of outside legal services, and their purchasing options have improved dramatically.”. Abstractly considered, the statement by Janet Langford Kelly, Susan Sneider and Kelly Fox, “The…
Hourly billing rates of outside counsel cover this blog like spring pollen, as they settle everywhere you look, increase dramatically once a year, and cause some general counsel to suffer allergic reactions. References to rates being plentiful, it took a while to assemble my posts other than seven previously composted…
Don’t even whisper the following thought to your law firms! What if a general counsel were to abolish review of most invoices and re-direct the time thereby saved into approvals of weekly business plans by law, real-time calls and input, and other forms of on-the-scenes oversight of what law firms…
Magazines and conferences relish headlines about dissatisfaction by general counsel with their law firms, but a recent survey by Robert Half Legal of 150 attorneys “among the largest corporations in the United States and Canada” undermines those complaints. As reported in The Lawyers Competitive Edge, Vol. 11, March 2009 at…
We who contemplate management of outside counsel focus hugely on total amounts paid, overlooking the importance and insights of the regularity of spending during a matter’s life. How much a department spends each month on a matter I define as the burn rate. Burn rate analyses shed light on volatility…
… “so, there’s got to be better firms than them out there,” assessed the GC, based on the recent performance of one of the company’s primary law firms. The last six years have been a sellers’ market, evidenced by law firms’ steady and dramatic raising of their billing rates. During…
“ … as opposed to [our primary law firm’s] approach of having a meeting with six people just to debate the issue,” contended the General Counsel. While this General Counsel is facetiously overstating the situation (or, maybe not), how can a law department ensure efficient delivery of advice as opposed…
Quite a few posts here tell something about typical charge-out rates of outside counsel (See my post of April 8, 2005: compare billing rates of your key firms to peer firms; Sept. 5, 2005: European law departments at about $220 an hour; Sept. 10, 2005: rates of top three firms;…
For once I side with law firms: most-favored-nation agreements (MFNs) are unfair, ineffective, meaningless, and unenforceable. Otherwise, they make sense. My entreaty on most-favored nation agreements seeks multilateral disarmament. Do away with them! General counsel should not ask for and law firms should not agree to fictitious arrangements whereby firms…
Of the 33 covenants, 21 of them are ho-hum, sporadically rolled out, always paid lip service to, and modestly adhered to in most law department-law firm relationships. Guidelines for outside counsel (and perhaps some engagement letters from law firms) state most of the covenantial desiderata. Of the remaining group, none…