Legal services as a percentage of revenue. From Robert H. Frank and Philip J. Cook, The Winner-Take-All Society (Penguin Books 1995) at 219: “[L]egal services, which accounted for only 0.6% of gross domestic product in 1960, accounted for 1.39% in 1987.” The late 1980’s was about the time when the American Corporate Counsel Association got under way and law departments started becoming more prominent. What is cause and what is effect? Moreover what is the percentage more recently of legal services to the GDP? This is total legal spending as a percentage of revenue at the largest scale!
More Web 2.0 offerings. Law Tech. News, March 2008 at 51, describes PreCYdent www.precydent.com, a provider of public-domain law. “On the drawing board is a social network platform to help users find lawyers, and lawyers and lay persons to share knowledge” (See my post of March 16, 2008: Web 2.0 and in-house lawyers.).
The frequency of RFPs by law departments. Law Firm Inc., Vol. 6, March/April 2008 at 38, states that Chadbourne & Parke has a chief business development and marketing officer, Iris Jones. At that 400+ lawyer US firm, Jones’s department “is involved in about 20 proposals a month.” (See my posts March 17, 2006: work set in motion by RFPs; and May 9, 2007: many RFPs issued in 2006.).
More neuroscience for lawyers. Wired, April 2008 at 60, points out that you can use transcranial stimulation to increase your empathy (See my post of Aug. 19, 2007 #1: more on transcranial stimulation.).