Differences in legal intensity of industries do not cause assessments of primary firms to vary much

One chart in the excellent report by Acritas, Sharp Legal Brands – Global Elite (2009) at 26, gives scores from 12 industries for their law departments’ satisfaction with their most-used firm. The data includes both the average score and the standard deviation of the scores for each industry. What impressed me is that the average scores across nearly all of the industries are remarkably similar, that is, within .1 of the midpoint score. This suggests to me that no matter how variable industries are in their legal intensity, overall satisfaction is remarkably similar.

The standard deviations, however, vary considerably more, which as the report indicates suggests disparate satisfaction levels across industries. The report does not interpret this curious finding (See my post of Aug. 10, 2009: standard deviation with 9 references.).