Ann Page and Richard Trapp, Managing External Legal Resources (ICSA 2007) at 43, describe how Carillion’s legal department holds “improvement workshops – joint workshops with network firms concentrating on improving specific aspects of the way we work together” (italics in original). That is the only mention of the workshops, but…
Previous posts have disagreed with the ideas of Bo Yancey, Director of Professional Services at Redwood Analytics, on March 9, 2009, about RFPs. Here is my third disagreement with Yancey. “In the end, firms and clients are best served working closely together to understand each other’s needs and values, and…
“The best way to deal with RFP’s is to avoid them altogether, and the stronger and deeper the relationship with a client, the better chance a firm has of doing just that. Redwood Analytics has conducted research that indicates, not surprisingly, that clients with more than one senior partner who…
Law firm partners widely dislike RFPs, unless they by getting one they have an opportunity to secure work from a new client. If firms only see RFPs as bludgeons to shrink their margins, as the following quote asserts, they would have more justification for their animus. “Of course, a primary…
Amidst the prevailing frenzy of cost cutting, it is worth emphasizing that general counsel do not want to pinch pennies so much that their spousal firms – the few they are married to — refuse to take on more work. A law department might be willing to retain a firm…
A presenter at a recent conference on intellectual property showed a slide that sourced research by Martindale Hubbell. The pie chart on the slide had 10 slices, one for each of nine practice areas and “other.” Litigation 37% IP 11% Labor & Employment 11% M&A 9% Securities 7% Real Estate…
Caution: a sharp-elbow post! The following assumptions, cherished beliefs in fact, addle the minds of quite a few in-house lawyers. I tried to list them according to their perniciousness, but that is too hard to do. Furthermore, the more informative speculation might be how frequently the illusions exist and warp…
In the summer of 2008, Asian-Counsel surveyed law departments in Asia and the Middle East. One question asked in the http://www.pbpress.com/index.php?page=index&block=article&id=INIV3VX-OSHVGLZ-KFQMJNG-U49E8GJ survey was “Which issues have you found to be of concern when dealing with outside counsel?” I estimated from the bar chart that depicts the percentages of the five…
Pacific Business publishes Asian-Counsel, which published the results of a survey in the summer of 2008 of its survey of law departments in Asia and the Middle East. One question asked in the survey was “What three factors most influence your choice of outside counsel?” A bar chart depicts the…
This post is not about the use of “local counsel” to mean counsel hired in another country. One particular form of that includes firms privileged to practice before a country’s patent and trademark office (See my post of Aug. 7, 2007: IP specialists in foreign countries; and April 10, 2006:…