Some general counsel reject the suggestion that they charge back to clients the outside counsel payments made on their behalf. One reason for such reluctance is a fear that clients will then believe they have a right to say which law firm to use and how to manage the firm,…
Authorization levels when lawyers review outside counsel bills are typically set by the financial department, not by the law department. I suppose a general counsel could lower the level, but that makes little sense. The invoice approval level should mean that only infrequently must a higher ranking in-house lawyer provide…
Excerpt from Kirkland & Ellis’ brochure, “Partnering with Clients Through Legal Risk Sharing,” appeared on a slide at a recent webinar. “In certain matters, we have taken part of our fee in equity or stock” (See my post of Jan. 18, 2009: share prices, event studies and litigation with 6…
Among the National Law Journal’s “20 most influential general counsel in America” stands Robert Waterman, the general counsel of HCA Inc. (See my post of April 6, 2009: some observations on the list of 20 general counsel.). The short squib about him says that he cut HCA’s outside legal fees…
Jon Bellis of Thomson’s Hildebrandt group, holding forth during a recent webinar, claimed that “A relatively small number of law departments have a written strategy for retaining, using and managing outside counsel (“OC”)(as opposed to an OC policy or billing guidelines …).” Such a strategy document “might include criteria for…
Survey data from 2006 through 2008 shows that during those three years the number of matters handled by law firms and the number of firms used in the United States has remained relatively stable, at medians of about 350 matters and 100 law firms, respectively. The survey, from Thomson’s Hildebrandt…
At the 5th Annual IP Counsel Forum, the COO of LexisNexis Examen presented data from a Martindale-Hubbell study on how corporate counsel distribute legal work to law firms. The pie chart had ten slices, each with a percentage. For example, Litigation at 37 percent presumably means that this research found…
In February 2004, Prof. Clayton Christenson of the Harvard Business School and Scott Anthony, a partner at Innosight published a white paper entitled “eLawforum: Transforming Legal Services.” On page 4 of a reprint of that article,a sentence casually throws law departments under the bus. “Most economists would argue that legal…
In-house attorneys gnash their teeth at partner rates that near the $1,000 mark, but those rates at least partially reflect specialization. As they become more experienced, specialists can more it readily recognize patterns and apply familiar tools so they are more efficient than generalists. Pattern recognition dramatically increases efficiency (See…
In 2004, after eight rounds of a competitive bid run by eLawForum, Unocal chose Howrey to handle its entire environmental caseload through 2009 on a fixed fee. Litigation 2005 spells out the details of this arrangement. At the time, the average case took three year to resolve, cost $500,000 in…