The 2011 In-House Counsel Barometer, produced by the Canadian law firm Davies Ward Phillips & Vineberg In association with the Canadian Corporate Counsel Association (CCCA), covers the responses of 864 in-house lawyers in Canada. The report states at 9 that “one-fifth (19%) of in-house counsel are sole practitioners in their…
An article in New England IN-HOUSE, February 2012 at 12, discusses whether in-house counsel who leave a law department are free to join a competitor and practice law. It explains Rule 5.6 of the Rules of Professional Conduct which prohibits restrictions on the right of a lawyer to practice law…
Diversity & The Bar, Jan./Feb. 2012 at 47, published last year’s survey results that gathered data from hundreds of companies. The full report is available at the website of the Minority Corporate Counsel Association. http://www.mcca.com/data/global/images/Research/mccacldd_book.pdf For the initiatives discussed in the article, only law departments of much size carry them…
Drawing on data from 109 legal departments in France, consultant Helene Trink of Profit & Law reports that lawyers as a percentage of total legal staff is much higher than in American law departments. Her median figure: 77% of the total legal staff are lawyers (1st quartile 63% and third…
Legal hold software and a cost metric for law departments. Consider an item from KMWorld, Feb. 2012 at S12. “BIA’s legal hold compliance SaaS solution costs less than $2 per user per month.” Does that mean per employee or only per employees who are “custodians.” If that metric can serve…
The ALM benchmark survey in 2011 gathered data that broke down participants’ external spend. Some thirty departments gave figures for their outside counsel spend as well as for their external spend other than outside counsel, such as expert witnesses, patent maintenance and filing fees, directors’ costs, etc. The median ratio…
Whenever a law firm agrees to a fee to handle all the work of a defined kind for a set period, what is known as a fixed-fee agreement, that firm should be granted a corresponding ability to influence what the company does that triggers the work. The firm should be…
It is mildly exasperating and disappointing to hear the same examples time after time from the dais. Can’t speakers come up with something other than “Focus on strategic work, [pause as if pondering] such as bet-the-company litigation.” Can’t they offer something else? Or “Push your law firms to be innovative,…
I propose that the term “direct report” should apply only in those law departments that have at least one lawyer reporting to at least one non-GC lawyer. By this criterion, a six-lawyer department where all five report to the general counsel would have no “direct reports.” Yet, add one junior…
In her most recent benchmark report, Helene Trink, head of the French consultancy Profit & Law, published 2010 data on 75 law departments in France and their lawyer headcount. At the median, the number of lawyers per billion Euros of revenue was 8.5. If we take the Euro exchange rate…