The stenograph transcription industry (generally referred to as the “court reporting” industry) has more than 4,000 companies (sometimes called “agencies”), 40,000 reporters, and annual revenue of more than $2 billion. Most court reporters are hired by the litigation partner at the law firm that represents the company. Some of the…
I have written previously about e-billing services (See my post of Aug. 21, 2005 that distinguishes e-billing from matter management.), but have not collected in one post the names of leading vendors. Those names follow, along with some posts related to them. This blog has reported on data from many…
A practice is a set of actions — a process (See my post of April 27, 2006 on legal department processes.) — that a law department carries out time after time. A concept is an understanding or a set of beliefs that animates a law department in its practices. Confusingly,…
Econometrics is a self-consciously empirical approach to economics that blends theory, measurement, and statistical techniques. Taking the same approach are academic jurists who belong to the empirical legal studies movement (See my posts of Oct. 23, 2005 regarding this discipline yet the dearth of academics who study law departments.). Unfortunately,…
Litigation consultants work with law departments to map out case strategies, prepare courtroom exhibits, and provide forensic analysis. From a website came the following list: Charles River Associates (Boston, MA); Decision Research (Boston, MA); Economic Analysis Corporation (Los Angeles, CA); Economists Incorporated (Washington DC); FinEcon (Los Angeles, CA); Law &…
Let’s take an example and look at some tools. A law department knows the number of matters each of its law firms handled during a year. The easiest ways to describe that data include the average, median, and mode of matters per firm (See my post of Nov. 30, 2005…
One of the questions asked in a survey of UK law departments was “how good is the support that you receive from the IT function in the delivery of legal services.” As presented in Law Dept. Quarterly, Vol. 2, May-July 2006 at 25, on a scale of 1 to ten,…
The law department of Cisco, which spends each year three percent of its total legal budget on technology, has built a suite of tools, all of which are accessible through a portal. As I conceive it, portal software sits on top of other software packages and pulls together their content…
A side bar in Law Dept. Quarterly, Vol. 2, May-July 2006 at 22 (Jon Bellis), lists nine things that can undermine the success of a technology initiative: (1) “lack of commitment by the general counsel;” (2) “inadequate participation, understanding and buy-in among users;” (3) “unclear vision and goals;” (4) “technology…
Let me rattle off the reasons that come to mind. New software or hardware calls for some amount of change, and lawyers – like all people – generally dislike change (See my post of May 30, 2006 on the difficulties of change.). It is hard to calculate with conviction technology’s…