At a panel on diversity, reported in 8-K, Vol. 4, Fall 2008 at 18, a partner from Patton Boggs, Mary Beth Bosco, explained that her firm has three tracks for associates, based on the hours they are expected to bill. One track is for 1,650 hours, the next for 1,800…
Last spring, Pfizer hosted a Diversity Summit for members of its Pfizer Partnership Program of outside counsel. As described by a Pfizer lawyer in 8-K, Vol. 4, Fall 2008 at 18, “We had an open, engaging discussion regarding the retention and advancement of minority and women lawyers and firms. Firms…
Publications and conferences dote on the largest law firms (See my post of Feb. 20, 2008: two law firms break $2 billion in fees; and June 18, 2007: references on this blog to “Magic Circle” firms.). The big shots garner the most publicity and ascend into the heaven of icons.…
Matt Homann wrote a post on his blog, The [Non]Billable Hour, ten “rules” about hourly billing. I thought that was a promising topic, but found the entries to be mostly clever, quasi-aphorisms. But one caught by eye: “Sophisticated clients who insist on hourly billing do so because they’re smarter than…
An article in 8-K, Vol. 4, Fall 2008 at 7, describes groups of lawyers that are neither big firms nor boutiques. Reportedly also sometimes called “semi-virtual firms,” they include GCA Law Partners (Mountain View, CA), FSB Corporate Counsel (Atlanta), Axiom (NY), Phillips & Reiter (Houston), and Paragon Legal Group (San…
If you launch a competitive bid process and receive a number of RFPs, push your evaluators to articulate why they favor one firm’s proposal over another. Always ask evaluators to rank and to justify – it smokes out biases, lazy thinking, as well as on the one hand, on the…
Charge-out rates of law firms inexorably, inevitably and (to some inside lawyers) inequitably rise (See my post of July 30, 2005: nearly 5% increase in rates for partners; Sept. 25, 2006: outside counsel rates average $185 per hour; and Feb. 23, 2008: annual average increases of about 5.5% in outside-counsel…
In 2008, the law department of Waste Management asked every one of its outside firms to produce a two-page plan that assesses its people and their assignments to Waste Management matters. The law department graded every plan as “good,” “adequate,” or “poor.” According to Diversity & the Bar, Vol. 10,…
Several posts have discussed aspects of the Legal Electronic Data Exchange Standard (LEDES) (See my post of April 14, 2005: European law departments; Sept. 18, 2006: electronic legal invoice delivery; Sept. 18, 2006: LEDES files for budgets; Feb. 21, 2007: data from law firms; April 22, 2007: UTBMS savings article;…
Ron Pol, recommends a radical concept for your RFP process in terms of setting deadlines for law firms to reply. Writing in ACC Docket, Vol. 25, Sept. 2007 at 23, Pol urges law department managers to “ask how long they [bidding law firms] need to respond, and set the deadline…