Marsh & McClennan’s Michael Caplan, who manages the finances for that company’s legal team, spoke at length recently about accruals: “Technology to manage un-billed fee estimate accruals from law firms is critical and we put a process in place to capture un-billed fees monthly from our top 50 firms. We…
A stimulating review of two books about the history of science gave Nicholas Jardine, an emeritus professor at the University of Cambridge, an opportunity to summarize four high-level perspectives on scientific efforts. His review is in the Times Lit. Supp., Dec. 16, 2011 at 3-4. My application of those perspectives…
A rare example of quantitative research that bears on management issues of legal departments appears in the Acad. Mgt. J., Oct. 2011 at 981. The authors analyzed all two-party disputes involving vertical relationships handled by one law firm in Western Europe between 1991 and 2005. Those 102 disagreements involved 178…
Profit figures of law firms. The U.S. Census Bureau estimates that law firms in that country earned gross profits of $51 billion in 2003, which was a profit rate of 40 percent compared with revenues. However, the Rand report, “Innovations in the Provision of Legal Services in the United States,…
The size of the U.S. legal services industry, the term used in a Rand report just released, “Innovations in the Provision of Legal Services in the United States,” remains undecided. Rand’s study has more data that might clarify the number. Rand cites the Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Economic Analysis…
Macroeconomics takes a top-down perspective on economic activity whereas microeconomics looks at the elements of economic activity. According to Nicholas Wapshott, Keynes Hayek: the clash that defined modern economics (Norton 2011) at 196, John Maynard Keynes invented the macro branch. Possibly, but whether he did or not is beside the…
A collection of international laws is available on vLex. Along the lines of Justia’s offering, vLex appears to me from wandering around on its website to be very impressive. In the banner it boasts “43,505 customers, 62,590,371 documents (actually, I counted 62,590,369 but I may have lost track somewhere), 1,024…
An ad in the Economist, Dec. 17, 2011 at 160, seeks a general counsel for The Energy Charter Secretariat. It has three aspects that deserve mention. (1) It seeks candidates with “an excellent law degree.” Perhaps this is a Britishism, perhaps it is a polite way of saying “You have…
The quote comes from a NY Times article on Dec. 18, 2011 at BU 1. Prof. Andrew Morriss of the University of Alabama School of Law then adds that there aren’t enough lawyers who will handle personal matters for individuals, like divorces and bankruptcy filings, at “reasonable rates.” The article…
Jeff Hodge, Executive Director, Corporate of matter management and e-discovery vendor doeLEGAL, wrote December 13th on the company blog about the growth of the electronic document discovery (EDD) market. “Starting at about $40 million in revenues in 1999, the market appears to have grown to approximately $70 million in 2000,…