Law Department Management Blog
From a group of about 103 companies with revenues greater than $1 billion (of which 20 or so were based in the UK), 26 percent did not file a single lawsuit in the previous year. This astonishing metric came from Fulbright & Jaworski’s Second Annual Litigation Trends Survey (2005 at 9). In the revenue range from $100 million to $999 million, the comparable figure was 41 percent.
For the companies in that revenue group, the median was 2.8 lawsuits (average 10.2) commenced as plaintiff. With a median of 20 lawsuits filed against them in the past year, the ratio was about 7 cases as defendant to 1 case as plaintiff; using averages, the ratio was 6 to 1.
Many people estimate that 90 percent or more of the typical large company’s litigation load falls on them as defendants, not these lower ratios. (See my post of today on proceedings against this set of companies.) Presumably, collections litigation is not included in these statistics.