In-house litigation lawyers and their influence over sizeable corporate cash

How much money do in-house litigators direct? Consider that they account for, very approximately, one in ten lawyers in departments that spend roughly $600,000 in outside counsel fees per lawyer – with about half of those dollars going for litigation. Taking those figures together, the lone litigator in a ten lawyer department would presumably be managing external spending each year of about $3 million.

That person should have some tools for bill review, such as guidelines for outside counsel, checklists to help parse bills, standard formats for bills, budgets, paralegal assistance, electronic billing, and fixed fee arrangements among them.

It is impossible to come up with representative numbers for spending on settlements and judgments, but the range might be from half to twice the outside fees litigation fees paid.

Thus, one in-house litigation lawyer (in our hypothetical) would be overseeing $4 to $6 million in corporate spending.