I offered my two cents worth long ago (See my post of June 12, 2005) and later (See my post of June 13, 2006.). Both the firm and the lawyer attract clients, but the tendency I believe leans more often toward hiring the lawyer. Mike Roster, the former General Counsel…
Legal Business, July/Aug. 2007 at 44, lists the Global 50, the largest law firms in the world by 2007 turnover (revenue). To reach this golden level it takes a village of law departments paying generous fees, so I wondered how often the top five have showed up in this blog’s…
According to reports, some general counsel have banned the use on their matters of junior associates in law firms (See my post of May 11, 2007 on such policies.). On the other hand, according to the Texas Lawyer, Vol. 23, Nov. 5, 2007, at 7, “Another tactic some legal departments…
In Legal Business, Iss. 179, Nov. 2007 at 30, the magazine mentions data about billing rates of UK law partners. After casually stating that “billing rates have generally increased above the rate of inflation over the past year” the article offers some nose-bleed charge out rates. “The average partner in…
It is the unusual law department that meets with the key partners of its main law firms, once a year or so, to talk about how to improve the performance, together, of the department and firm (See my posts of May 24, 2006 about how rare any evaluations at all…
How many times have you heard the saying “if engineering firms can build airports/dam/buildings for a fixed fee, why can’t law firms handle matters on a fixed fee?” Well, engineering and construction firms may not be all that shrewd, according to a book review in the Wall St. J., Dec.…
Amidst all the talk about law firm billings and their relation to value delivered, why is there not more pricing of legal services based on how much money is involved in the transaction? Back in the late 1980s, Wachtell Lipton often charged as much is one percent of the total…
On the topic of foreign-counsel retention, this blog has considered the difficulties in some capitals (See my post of Feb. 12, 2006 on the absence of a buyer’s market.) and several considerations (See my post of Oct. 19, 2007 on, for example, bypassing senior partners.). While it may be only…
Corp. Counsel, Vol. 14, Dec. 2007 at 22, extracts some findings from the fourth annual litigation trends survey conducted by Fulbright & Jaworski (See my posts of Oct. 26, 2007; Oct. 29, 2007 (2); and Oct. 31, 2007 for more on that study.). The extracts concern billing arrangements for a…
Wal-Mart may supplant DuPont as the mover and shaker of outside counsel management. Its latest volley, described in InsideCounsel, Dec. 2007 at 13, blasts out from a memo of Associate General Counsel Miguel Rivera Sr. to the company’s relationship partners (See my post of Nov. 22, 2005 about Wal-Mart’s those…