A slew of posts here have commented on the practice alleged to be reasonably common of law departments of banning junior associates from charging time to their matters (See my posts of Nov. 19, 2007; and May 11, 2007 with 14 references.). GC Mid-Atlantic, Sept. 2007 at 13, cites a…
A large insurance company I assisted put out for bid its future portfolio of certain cases. The firms that were invited to propose were given an opportunity to come to the law department and look through the files of pending cases that were similar to those to be covered by…
“If, for instance, two law firms have an equivalent reputation and location, one study found that clients will not switch firms until the prices in the old firm are 34% higher than its competitors.” For a law firm trying to horn in on a competitor’s turf, that is a staggering…
I do not counsel law departments to freeze billing rates of their law firms across the board (See my posts of Nov. 11, 2007 about broad-brush measures; and April 26, 2006 on billing-rate freezes imposed that way.). I do, however, feel that it is fair to ask a law firm…
Back in March, Legal Times published my article on the exaggerated notion of how frequently law departments dispatch law firms (See my post of May 24, 2007 #2 with its URL to article, references and a style punctured by puns.). Since that piece appeared, a number of posts have continued…
About 10 years ago, Susan Samuelson, a professor at Boston University, published a very good book about law firm management. In Chapter 6 of Law Firm Management: A Business Approach (Little, Brown 1992) she discusses pricing legal services. In Section 6.2.2 she turns her attention to fixed-see billing. She expresses…
My post of Aug.1, 2006 asked whether guidelines for outside counsel make much of a difference in the amounts spent by law departments. I suspect not, but others disagree. My friend Mike Roster, the former General Counsel of Golden West Financial Corporation and Stamford University, must have believed in their…
Tony Williams, a consultant in Britain, has a view on concentration of clientele by large law firms. Quoted in Legal Week, Vol. 9, Nov. 2007 at 5, he states that “’Most big firms now rely on their top 50 to 100 clients for 50% of their work’”. His point is…
The legal department of General Motors (GM), which has promoted diversity among its law firms since 1993, has recently tugged on the wallets of its primary firms to keep the initiative progressing. Corp. Counsel, Vol. 14, Dec. 2007 at 19, reports that GM set firm-specific diversity goals for six of…
A previous post counted how many times the seven highest-grossing law firms in the world had been referenced on this blog (See my post of Dec. 16, 2007.). Those firms are, in order, Clifford Chance, LinkLaters, Freshfields, Skadden Arps, DLA Piper, Allen & Overy, and Latham & Watkins. Earning most…