Who would have thought it? Started on a whim, encouraged by Aric Press for ALM’s fledgling network of blogs, survivor of bitter opposition within Hildebrandt, unsure of its focus or style or reception or longevity, awkward in its use of technology for blogging, somehow this blog has kept calm and…
The General Counsel of Allstate, Michele Coleman Mayes, gave an interview to Metropolitan Corporate Counsel, Feb. 2012 at 1. Introducing herself, Mayes said “Our legal department is the fifth largest in the country, with approximately 500 lawyers representing our insureds and 130 attorneys dedicated to other matters.” She counts so-called…
Of the departments participating in ALM’s metrics survey last year, 68 provided data on how many law firms they had retained in 2010 and how many they had retained in 2009. Among that group, contrary to all the talk about dramatic reductions in the number of law firms retained, their…
I have commented before on the amount of information Legal Suite makes public, in striking contrast to the close-mouthed approach of other matter management vendors (See my post of Jan. 27, 2012: revenue, specific users, installed base.). The company’s newsletter this month had more detail. “Heading towards the 400th customer?…
It is well recognized that internal law department costs consist mostly of compensation and benefits. The data from ALM’s latest metrics collection corroborates that belief. In fact, it comes up higher than some general rules of thumb. Based on the numbers reported by about 70 U.S. legal departments, 86 percent…
This year’s survey is officially OPEN! Click on this precious link to complete your response. You will relish the streamlined questionnaire, 26+ industries, five releases, medians for 25 key metrics, and the zero cost. For your industry to be well represented, please forward this post by e-mail to your colleagues…
A.C. Grayling, Ideas that Matter: the concepts that shape the 21st century (Basic Books 2010) presents the venerable British philosopher’s summaries of 130 major concepts. Most covered in 2-3 pages, approximately 30 of them have already appeared on this blog. One that has not is accommodation theory, devised in the…
Twenty-nine colleges or universities use the fixed fee retainer program of the National Center for Higher Education Risk Management (NCHERM). Corp. Counsel, Feb. F012 at 20, reports on this unusual arrangement where legal services are outsourced. The founder of NCHERM offers colleges legal advice, training programs and expert witness services…
If you’re reading this and your company sells software, help the rest of us with a comment. What are the differences between these five terms? Some connotations for me are below but many distinctions and definitions elude me, not to mention there may be other terms that deserve to be…
How contracts are managed by legal departments is one of the topics covered by Exari’s white paper, Corporate Counsel Contracts Survey Report, Dec. 2011 at 12. A column chart shows the results from approximately 100 legal departments. Given four choices regarding the percentages of the techniques they use to manage…