Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) recently surveyed 48 law departments (about a quarter of the respondents were general counsel) representing midmarket organizations (500 to 999 employees, 17%), larger companies (1,000 to 2,499 employees, 10%) and enterprise-class (2,500 employees or more, the remainder). ESG was dismayed to find that in 2010 almost…
“Regulatory proceedings” and “regulatory investigations” are terms used in the most recent Annual Litigation Trends Survey Report of Fulbright & Jaworski. No distinction is made between them, but one feels adversarial (investigations) whereas the other could be an administrative hearing like a rate increase proceeding. Sixty percent of their 405…
The Eighth Annual Litigation Trends Survey Report of Fulbright & Jaworski found (at 13) that 18 percent of its 405 responding companies faced at least one lawsuit with more than $20 million at issue (5% of the respondents faced 6 or more). There is no breakdown given for U.S. and…
My writings on over-hyped “bet the company” litigation mostly has made the point that they are black swans (See my post of Oct. 27, 2011: bet-the-company with 8 references.). Which rare lawsuits fall into that cataclysmic category, where expense management flees, general counsel quake, and corporate futures hang in the…
During the past one-thousand posts, litigation that involves patents accounts for several of my posts (See my post of Dec. 17, 2010 #3: patent trolls and lawsuits; Jan. 14, 2011: patent litigation costs; Jan. 22, 2011: low percentage of chip patents in litigation; June 19, 2011 #4: LITAlert database of…
For a typical U.S. company, the percentage of patents held outside the country might approximate its percentage of international revenue. Stated differently and with an illustration, if a third of its patents are ex-U.S., then its revenue from overseas might also be expected to be around a third. Companies pay…
An article in New England In-House, Nov. 2011 at 11, discusses how to prevent runaway legal fees. Most of the article contains plain-vanilla ideas, but the author does mention a confection new to me. He first trundles out the well-accepted technique of a collar on a fixed fee such that…
Any comments by me on insurance coverage tread dangerously close to a topic where my total ignorance almost outweighs my desire to write about topics of law department management. Almost. In Executive Counsel, Dec. 2011/Jan. 2012 at 20, Peter Selvin pselvin@rainselaw.com describes a number of ways that comprehensive general liability…
“Whatever does not add tangible value to client projects is overhead that clients should not be directly or indirectly paying for.” That was the aggressive tagline on a slide by Lee Cheng, the general counsel of Newegg. I did not hear his presentation when Cheng spoke at the most recent…
This blog has acknowledged a handful of maturity models that pertain to law departments (See my post of May 15, 2009: for compliance; May 12, 2010: for attention to intellectual property; May 12, 2010: for legal departments overall; Aug. 10, 2011: for outside counsel management; and Aug. 10, 2011: for…