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Cost per hour in Germany matches that of the US for internal lawyers

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Data from 2009 for 56 of the largest German companies indicate that the average cost per hour of their in-house lawyers was €148. At 1.5 US dollars per Euro as the approximate exchange rate, the cost was in the range of $222 an hour, almost precisely what the equivalent would have been for Fortune 150 US companies.

The German data comes from the General Counsel Benchmarking Report for 2009 of Otto Henning & Co. at 103. The report points out that the fully-loaded cost per hour had risen 5.2 percent from 2005 to 2007 and 5.1 percent during the next two years. Those increases also probably match quite closely to the US figures.

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One response to “Cost per hour in Germany matches that of the US for internal lawyers”

  1. Johnnie Jackson says:
    March 7, 2011 at 7:45 am

    Interesting in-house salary data points. Another interesting comparison in the U.S. would be the cost per hour of outside attorneys to the fully loaded cost of in-house attorneys by category: 1)years of ecperience; 2)region. My prediction would be that the numbers are closer than we might first expect if we take in to account the “non-billable” work in-house attorneys have to devote some/much of their time to. With this information, managing attorneys could make better decisions about how to divide different types of work among a legal team composed of both in-house and outside team members.