Recent benchmark surveys by Laurence Simons,legal recruiters,and Rees Morrison report on 123 Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) legal departments and 57 Asia-Pacific (APAC) legal departments, respectively. Email me if you would like a free copy and specify which one.
The median revenue per APAC lawyer was $250 million; the corresponding figure for EMEA was $204 million (€157,142,857 at 1.3 dollars to the Euro). Based on medians, the EMEA legal departments supported less revenue in their region than did their Asian counterparts. Averages told a different story. The APAC average was $274 million whereas the EMEA average was much higher at $317 million (€244,358,702). The difference between median and average figures says that some EMEA-based companies were much larger than the largest group of Asian companies supported much more revenue.
One part of the benchmark reports suggests eight ways that a general counsel might increase revenue per lawyer:
- Use outside counsel more often, if it results in fewer in-house lawyers
- Hire more support staff and reduce the number of lawyers
- Increase efficiency of in-house lawyers by the use of software, knowledge bases, training, work focus and teamwork
- Set up self-service capabilities for clients and reduce the number of lawyers
- Avoid quasi-legal tasks so you need less staff
- Invest in standardization of work product to increase productivity
- Hire fewer but higher quality lawyers
- Set and enforce expectations of greater output per lawyer.