As paraphrased in MOFO Tech, Spring/Summer 2012 at 18, an appellate judge made two intriguing statements, one about the relative costs of intellectual property cases – presumably patent cases – and the other about discovery’s wastefulness. Federal Court of Appeals Chief Judge Randall R. Rader “noted that IP cases…
Amounts initially awarded by juries do not reflect any reductions or offsets subsequently granted by judges or appellate courts, but they do represent data points regarding corporate legal costs. So, let’s start with data for the top 100 verdicts in United States as published in Corp. Counsel, May 2012 at…
I tried something for the first time. I prepared a decent draft of an article to be published and circulated it for comments to about a half dozen people whose thoughts I would value. Academics do that all the time with works-in-process, but not only do I regrettably finish my…
During the Iraqi “surge,” the “Army had one lawyer or paralegal for every 240 combatants, and these legal professionals have ever more say over battlefield decisions. That is leaving aside the judge advocates general (or JAGs), who offer guidance on the laws of war.” This amazing quote comes from the…
The Association of Corporate counsel (ACC) collected data in the spring of 2011 and recently made it available in its 2011 Census Report. Based only on promotional material available on ACC’s website, here are my initial thoughts. http://www.acc.com/legalresources/resource.cfm?show=1306363 The ACC collected date during April and May of 2011. The Report…
Tom Kilroy, the General Counsel of a UK company has another role: “For the past three months, I’ve occupied a line management rather than a legal role, as acting Chief Executive Officer of a publicly listed company with 4,200 employees, operating in over 100 countries and making hundreds of millions…
A Google search for “list of US publicly traded companies” turned up a link that referred to a Bloomberg directory with “over 33,000 companies.” The web site of Credit Risk Monitors claims to identify 20,899 public companies in the United States. Credit Risk Monitors also lists about 56,000 non-US companies…
This blog has often referred to the fully loaded cost per hour of corporate attorneys. It has also from post to post provided data on the effective hourly rate of law-firm partners and associates. More recent data came as to the latter from Law Practice, July/August 2012 at 46, which…
An article in Law Practice, July/August 2012 at 40, describes “15 proven profitability techniques” for today’s law firms. Two of them raised my eyebrows and should do the same for general counsel. Under the technique “unbundle operating costs from case related expenses,” the author writes that “clients should be asked…
In Law Practice, July/August 2012 at 14, a law firm consultant describes a “client scorecard.” With it, your law firms might rate you on five categories: “level of cooperation”; “how enjoyable your work is”; how profitable your work is; your relative ability to pay the firm’s fees; and one category…