Law Department Management Blog
The concept of baseline external spend by legal departments and a call for clarity (Oct. 3, 2010)
Law departments needs a defined, consensual term such as “baseline external spend” for the normal pace of spending.
In terms of reducing costs, innovative sourcing easily bests innovative pricing (Oct. 4, 2010)
The sourcing decision determines the total cost much more profoundly than does the pricing decision.
How many trees for paper did your legal department destroy this year? (Oct. 7, 2010)
One estimate is 8,333 pages.
Combine statistical data with experienced analysis for the best risk predictions (Oct. 11, 2010)
The authors mention two techniques for increasing the accuracy of judgments: expert interviews and prediction markets.
All-you-can-eat retainers to resolve specialized questions of law (Oct. 12, 2010)
The firm’s experts can answer nearly all the questions quickly, without research or writing.
Blind bids for how much your firm, as plaintiff’s counsel, will recover for you before dipping in (Oct. 21, 2010)
“Firms, how much of the recovery will we – the client – get to keep before you take a piece of the action.”
Data on the percentage of law firm fees that are billed other than on an hourly basis and the two-year trend (Oct. 22, 2010)
Whatever the definitional and methodological issues, the trend upwards from this data remains unarguable.
Two steps toward contract efficiency – reduce the number of approvals and get e-signatures (Oct. 26, 2010)
Reduce the number of required approvals and obtain e-signatures.
Part of value negotiations with law firms can be reductions in liability risks (Oct. 31, 2010)
It seems to be a bargaining chip that inside counsel might put on the table.
Halstead metrics for software complexity and an extrapolation to agreement complexity (Oct. 31, 2010)
Not to promote complexity, but with software and a common measure of contractual complexity, it would be easier to assess the productivity of legal departments, the level of client demand for agreements, the value delivered by law firms, and improvements in the structure and content of agreements.