Fenwick & West started a program in 2010 whereby the firm “put a half dozen standardized legal documents on the Web for free to help entrepreneurs streamline the process of funding their startups without generating big legal bills.” The quote comes from Bloomberg BusinessWeek, April 11, 2011 at 30. An…
In-house attorneys around the world work varying numbers of hours each year, at least if you give credence to the combined effect of paid leave and paid public holidays mandated in each country. Consider one flagrant contrast summarized by Eduardo Porter, The Price of Everything: Solving the mystery of why…
I signed a consulting agreement this week that had strong language about consistent staffing. This was not, I repeat, from any guideline for outside counsel, but it does suggest a level of control that some general counsel might impose on their primary law firms. “Any removal or reassignment by [Law…
For several reasons surveys don’t collect data on settlements paid by corporations. Often those amounts are kept confidential, and few within the defendant company know them. Other times settlement funds come from business units, sometimes more than one, and it may be difficult for the law department to assemble those…
Reductionists try to explain a something with a single primary cause – it is common to both the religious and scientific ways of thinking. Astrology is reductionist, Marxism as well, and Freudianism offers another example. Single factors, such as gender or the march of material progress in history, appeal to…
Imagine if someone had outside counsel guidelines from a dozen Fortune 500 companies during the 1970s, from the same companies or comparables during the 1980s, and likewise for the next two decades. Such a collection would allow a historiography of guidelines: a study of how the guidelines changed over time.…
Since my last collection, several more posts have made points settlements. Some particularly concern law firms (See my post of April 9, 2009: advantage of fixed fee when negotiating settlements; Oct. 7, 2009 #4: empowering outside counsel to settle cases; March 16, 2010: fixed-fee arrangements; Oct. 3, 2010: heavier billing…
Trial.Com, the Network of Trial Law Firms, has launched its YouTube-platform CLE. The website allows in-house attorneys to watch videos and build their CLE credits in California, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, New Jersey, New York and other states in accordance with those states’ rules. According to the Trial.com press release,…
A simple formula allows you to calculate the number of relevant documents missed by reviewers, or the precedent cases missed by researchers, or the improper expense records submitted on invoices, or the number of typos in a brief. Curious? As explained in John D. Barrow, 100 Essential Things You Didn’t…
A second set of ten posts on columns I have written for InsideCounsel Early on, I collected my first columns under Morrison on Metrics (See my post of Sept. 30, 2010: ten InsideCounsel columns, starting in May 2010.). Now I am back at it with an updated collection of ten…