Vendors who publicize specific law department clients. Concentra, a national healthcare company, allows BottomLine Technologies to publish a case study of it in an advertisement.
Document assembly (legal drafting systems) overview. In response to my post about systems on the market and Marc Lauritsen (See my post of Jan. 28, 2007.) Marc thoughtfully sent me his working draft on current frontiers in that space. Those who are interested in this field will find its 11-pages thoughtful and well referenced.
Costs of employment litigation. LegalWeek, Dec. 7, 2006, at 4, cites research done by the Centre for Effective Dispute Resolution, the UK law firm Lewis Silken, and Barclays Bank. Based on a survey of 570 business managers, the researchers calculated that the average cost to a company in the UK of dealing with an employment dispute is £277,000 (around $500,000). That amount is substantially more than the average cost of approximately $40,000 for US employment disputes cited in a recent post (See my post of April 22, 2007 for the source of that figure.).
Bill padding and excessive billing. In the Wall St. J., May 2, 2007, at B2, an item summarizes research done by Prof. William G. Ross of Samford University’s Cumberland School of Law. The research returns to the questions he surveyed about billing padding and excessive billing a decade ago (See my post of Aug. 26, 2006.). As an aside on statistical methodology, Ross “polled 5,000 attorneys from a random sampling of lawyers at firms throughout the country,” and 251 responded. I would need some convincing that the data obtained is representative when 95 percent of those polled did not bother to reply.