Lawyers per billion and per thousand employees in large German law departments

The well-done General Counsel Benchmarking Report for 2009 of Otto Henning & Co. at 64 provides data on the number of lawyers (Rechtsanwälte weltweit) worldwide its benchmark survey participants reported. From the 56 companies in the survey, all from the German Fortune 150, the overall average was 3.5 lawyers per billion Euros of revenue. That would be 2.3 lawyers per US billions of revenue at an exchange rate of $1.5 per Euro, which compares favorably to the medians for large US law departments: in the range of 3-to-5 lawyers per billion. The five industries for which detail is given vary considerably – from 5.5 to 1.3 lawyers per billion Euros.

As to lawyers per thousand employees (Beschäftigte), the Henning report states an average of 2.4. The industries do not vary as much on this benchmark: 2.5 to 1.1. In the US a typical figure for large companies would be quite similar.