“On average, in France, approximately 350 new patent cases are initiated every year in first instance [trial courts] and 110 appeals are lodged.” I knew from that sentence in FocusEurope, Summer 2011 at 54, that good metrics lay ahead in an ad by Véron & Associés. C’est vrai. Based on…
IMF (Australia) Ltd. Is a publicly-traded investor in litigation. A long profile from The Asian Lawyer, Summer 2011 at 17, explains how its founder, Hug McLernon started funding cases in 1989 and took his company public in 2001. It currently has around $1.7 billion in active claims under management (See…
The point of this post is the increasing availability at low cost of legal guidance and work product on the Internet. The trend toward even more cloud law is inexorable. Bloomberg Bus. Week, July 11 at 41, describes LawPivot as a Q&A website that allows cash-strapped entrepreneurs to ask questions…
That hurts, that view really hurts. That business managers resent laws and kick the dog of the department that reminds them about its costs and constraints can’t be denied. That it takes time for a lawyer to look at an agreement or an advertisement or a potential patent or a…
Canadian Lawyer gathered salary data from 12 Canadian general counsel. The findings broke them into “director level” and “executive level.” The salary differential was large, as the median for the directors was $155,000 (Canadian dollars) versus $207,000 for the executives (30% higher). The sample is very small, but the point…
The second release has 317 participants from 23 countries grouped into 21 industries. Somewhat more than half of them are headquartered in the United States. One quarter of the participants reported revenue below $500 million. One quarter reported revenue greater than $5.8 billion. The median revenue was $1.5 billion. The…
An article on requests for proposal in the ACC Docket, June 2011 at 74, claims that “More and more companies are using requests for proposal (RFPs) to get a glimpse of what tailored ‘solutions’ outside counsel may offer and on what basis.” To glimpse tailored solutions may be legitimate and…
If you would like to receive my no-cost newsletters, click on the notice to the right and enter your name and e-mail address. This issue went to 367 subscribers. As with my previous newsletters, I looked to my readers to decide what to write about. The spoke through Feedburner, which…
As described in the ACC Docket article (June 2011 at 154), the legal department at Rosetta Stone has grown in five years from three to 19 – including currently seven lawyers and a dozen non-lawyers. Among the latter are some who combat piracy of the company’s software. My basic belief…
According to an ACC Docket article (June 2011 at 78), partners in some law firms are gatekeepers “acting as channels through which communications and legal advice must be directed.” Such an arrangement, by my lights, obstructs, slows, and costs. It obstructs because if someone in a law department has a…