Marinate on this. When a new case arrives that looks like it will incur significant fees, have a capable firm (the budget firm) prepare a budget — with its key assumptions expressed clearly. Tell the budget firm that another firm will have the opportunity to represent the company in the…
My accumulating doubts about the efficacy of bonuses dangled before law firms spilled over into an article. Click here for a pdf of my recent article. The article draws on a number of posts here ((See my post of July 27, 2008: bonuses for law firms with 13 references.).
Sometimes a general counsel may find that a law firm is willing to handle a set of work for a fixed fee, such as all ERISA questions, if the firm in turn enjoys a privileged position when juicy law suits come along, such as employment litigation. Indeed, this “right of…
A general counsel was describing a flat-fee arrangement he struck with a firm to handle about a million dollars of work in three buckets of services. Among other observations, he stressed that if a law department fashions something unusual like that, it is very important that the partner who agrees…
At a panel this month, I heard that a year ago Home Depot’s general counsel told his law firms that the law department would not pay for the time of first and second year associates. When asked about the reaction of firms to that prohibition, he said “There has been…
At a conference recently, an attendee lambasted a law firm that has the temerity to charge a paralegal out at $200 an hour. $200 an hour for a paralegal!? To couple “paralegal” and “$200” into ludicrous is wrong-headed. If the paralegal delivers value for what they do each hour, no…
From a survey on Legal OnRamp, a professional networking site for lawyers, 84 in-house lawyers responded who work at companies with revenues of at least one billion dollars. The American Lawyer’s Aric Press put the survey in context. Over the next five years, the reduction in the number of law…
E-billing has steadily ascended the ladder of popularity and penetration among law departments. Accordingly, this blog has compiled at least 45 posts on e-billing (See my post of Aug. 15, 2008: ranking of e-billing as IT application; Aug. 27, 2008 #4: blog on e-billing; Jan. 4, 2006: spreading acceptance of…
To a survey on Legal OnRamp, a professional networking site for lawyers, 84 lawyers responded who work at companies that have revenues of at least one billion dollars. The American Lawyer’s Aric Press put the survey in context. Sixty-three of these respondents estimated the number of law firms their departments…
Sometimes General Counsel feel it is appropriate to bring in a “hired gun” to take the lead at trial. Skill at trial advocacy is all well and good but to insert a lawyer not intimately familiar with the facts, people, politics, and economics of the case is a dangerous practice.…