Law departments want to generate value. What is the value of an acquisition? The amount paid to buy a company may be clear, but the worth of the deal depends in part on how far out you look. What is the value of a license agreement? Projected revenue? Possibly, but…
The NY Times, Oct. 28, 2011 at B2, reports that in 2009 audit fees averaged $569,000 per billion dollars of revenue. For U.S. companies that year, what they spent on their law department and outside counsel averaged something like $5 million per billion of revenue – on the order of…
The Canadian Corporate Counsel Association (CCCA) published in its Autumn issue an article about measuring the value of a law department. It describes the considerable efforts of a large Canadian power company to depict what its legal team accomplishes. This blogger has some trenchant quotes in the article, to be…
A recent survey asked general counsel of UK companies how well their law department is valued by their company. One choice, the most favorable, was “The legal department is recognised as a valuable part of the organization.” Of the 124 respondents, 29 percent strongly agreed and 60 percent agreed; only…
Based on longitudinal data from a large group of U.S. law departments, it appears that the economic recession did not have all that much impact on them. My most recent article for the National Law Journal, published on Sept. 12, 2011, discusses the two-year changes and notes the slight increase…
“82 per cent of respondents [to the survey referenced below] indicated that their organisation’s disputes are resolved by negotiated settlement. Five years ago this figure was 74 percent.” The quote comes from The In-House Perspective, April 2011 at 13, which cites Deloitte & Touche’s “Forensic Corporate Counsel Survey 2010: do…
Every now and then an in-house lawyer may learn of proposed legislation and alert clients to its possible effects. Here and there a lawyer passes on advice based on a court’s ruling or experience from a deal. Lawyers can sometimes be ahead of the game. And yet: mostly, law departments…
It’s probably not good for me, a consultant to law departments, to take law departments down a peg or two, but here I go. All the staff function, be they HR, finance, information technology, internal audit, facilities, PR, law, provide specialized input and support for business managers. Why lawyers should…
No self-respecting in-house attorney wants to be besmirched as a relay station to outside counsel. Client calls; inside counsel speed dials; partner does the work. It is fine and proper to be the switch when you judiciously choose the external firm, frame carefully what they are to do, and translate…
Regardless of your view of Rupert Murdoch, you have to be impressed by the physical boldness and quickness of his interim group general counsel. Janet Nova was the first person at Murdoch’s recent hearing in London to react to a protester’s approach. As the NY Times, July 21, 2011, put…