Home > Page 9
Published on:

By

A recent article made two points regarding the graphical presentation of information. The points derive from a study that presented four kinds of graphics and asked a group of doctors to rate a pair their characteristics: were the graphs correct and were they enjoyable to look at.  The doctors said that an “icon graph” was the most accurate depiction of the data, compared to a table, a bar graph, or a pie chart, though it was also the least enjoyable.

Since icon graphs are new to me, let me describe the one the article showed.  The icon graph had for rows and four columns of squares.  Some of the squares were solid green, some solid red, and some had a diagonal line through them from the top left to the bottom right. Thus, each cell conveyed one of four combinations: either color and lined or not.  That’s a lot of information to convey in one graphic!

For example, if you had four categories of law firms you retained last year, by number of lawyers, and you had several ranges of fees paid, an icon graph could locate the appropriately colored/lined square for each firm over its fees paid during the year.

Continue reading
Published on:

By

During the four years that I have run the General Counsel Metrics benchmark survey, only four companies headquartered in Japan have participated.  On the other side of the Pacific, 19 subsidiaries of Japanese companies, all based in the United States, have taken part.

Now I may know why companies in Japan have rarely submitted benchmark data to the GC Metrics study.  According to the Asian Lawyer, January 2013 at 10, the Japan Federation of Bar Associations counted 707 bengoshi working in corporate law departments.  Bengoshi are the elite, Japanese-qualified lawyers.  That modest number jumped significantly from 64 in 2001: a tenfold increase in ten years. However, they still make up only two percent of the 32,000 bengoshi currently qualified to practice.

Even so, there is a Japan In-house lawyers Association, whose president is Yasushi Murofushi, the general counsel of Credit Suisse Securities (Japan).  There is also the 1,000 member Association of Corporate Legal Departments, headed by Tadaaki Sugiyama, general counsel of Kao Corporation.  Quite obviously, many non-bengoshi fill the ranks of Japanese legal departments.

Continue reading
Published on:

By

With permission, I reproduce below a post from Lynn Galbenski of Lumen Legal:

On February 12 from 1:00-2:00 p.m. EST, Lumen Legal will be hosting our first webinar of the year. It’s part of our 2013 Corporate Counsel webinar series to help Corporate Counsel meet the challenges of a changing legal marketplace. We’ll host six free webinars held this year.

Our Founder and SVP of Strategic Initiatives, Dave Galbenski, will be interviewing Rees Morrison. Rees is the President of General Counsel Metrics, LLC. For more than 25 years, Rees has specialized in corporate counsel consulting. He’s helped hundreds of general counsel and chief legal officers manage their legal departments more effectively. In 2009, he launched the first corporate counsel survey with over 800 corporate legal departments. He did so because he saw the clear need for a larger, simpler, less expensive survey. Today, over 1,000 corporate legal departments across 37 countries participate. In addition, 26 industries are covered. During the webinar, Rees talks about his latest release and shares the six fundamental benchmarks all corporate legal departments should monitor:

Continue reading
Published on:

By

Aric Press writes in the Jan. 2013 American Lawyer at 134 about an analysis he did of law firm billing data from 37 substantial companies.  CT TyMetrix provided the data and Aric explored various findings, such as total hours billed over a three year period and total external spending.

One finding that struck me was that $800-an-hour-and-up billings accounted for 179,768 hours during the first two quarters of 2012 out of a total of 2,796,077 hours.  That means a bit more than six percent of all the hours billed to those law departments were at $13.33 a minute!  As Aric put it, “For the right talent, price is not the problem.”

He also made the point that increasing shares of work flowed to Am Law 200 law firms.

Continue reading
Published on:

By

This wasn’t Scheherazade, but General Counsel Metrics ended the year with more than one thousand law departments!  I stopped at that point and prepared Release 5.0, which went to all participants on January 29th.

The United States (644 companies), France (145 companies), and Canada (54) accounted for the largest portion.  At the end of 2011, the participants had a total of 26,480 lawyers and 20,637 paralegals and support staff (medians of 5 and 4 respectively; averages of 26 and 20).

You are cordially invited to join the 2013 group.  Perhaps it will exceed 2,000 participants!  Your first release will come in late May or early June.  Here is the URL:

Continue reading
Published on:

By

During 2012, General Counsel Metrics collected compensation data for 65 law department administrators.  The report shows medians and quartiles for base salary, bonus, and total compensation as of Dec. 31, 2011 by six industries as well as five revenue ranges (a minimum of four respondents in each).

 

The industries are Construction/Engineering, Food & Beverage, Hospital Systems, Manufacturing, Not-for-Profit/Government, and Technology.  The revenue ranges are less than $1 billion, $1-2 billion, $2-3 billion, $4-5 billion, and more than $5 billion.

 

The report is free for administrators of participants in the current GC Metrics benchmark who request it. For anyone whose law department has NOT participated in the 2012 GC Metrics Benchmark Survey, the report is $45, payable by credit card here: https://www.usaepay.com/interface/epayform/fACVL74999b68PmleL0sQ2ms51SY4shn/  .  The URL to take the short, confidential GC Metrics survey is https://novisurvey.net/n/benchmarkmetrics2012.aspx.  Note in the last question some reference to the administrator’s comp report so we know to send you your report benchmark report plus your comp report.

Published on:

By

The Economist, Oct. 13, 2012 at 90, explains how the greater concentration of America’s largest metropolitan areas compared to those in the euro area confers big advantages.  Essentially, ideas appear and spread more quickly in larger urban areas, which economists referred to as “knowledge spillover.” Even though we have more methods of communication nowadays, the advantages of proximity to spillover seem to be increasing.  With growing complexity and size we need even more people and information swirling around us to make sense of it.  More densely populated cities attract people who want to share knowledge. This inter-relations between metropolitan size, skills, and productivity are complicated but they all feed on each other.

 

If we were to use this as a metaphor and apply it to the largest clump of lawyers in a law department – probably at home office or headquarters — we might find that this spillover effect benefits law departments also. Those with a preponderance of their lawyers in large cities or large clumps have more access to legal talent and legal service providers, and can draw on a larger talent pool for themselves, than law departments that are small, in off-the-beaten-track places or smaller cities.

 

Stated differently, on this reasoning, benchmark metrics of law departments that have a higher proportion of their lawyers based in larger cities should be better than those or rural or smaller-city departments.

Published on:

By

Having made my way through one recording, I plunged in with another.  This one I improved in several ways.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PwqLeN1QLNI&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Given my self-imposed limit of close to three minutes, I did not go into much about the definition of “lawyer,” the scope of whom should be included (more there on “hidden lawyers”), or part-time equivalents.  Notwithstanding these finer points, “lawyers” seems to be such a straightforward number.

One other point I did not make is that I have noticed that often when general counsel complete my survey twice, the numbers shift.  My thought all along with General Counsel Metrics and its global benchmark survey was that the Dec. 31st date would be a memorable date, a line in the sand for everyone as to how many lawyers they had on the payroll that final day.

Continue reading
Published on:

By

Inspired by my 10-year old son, I created my first YouTube video.  You can sit back and revel in 3 minutes and 34 seconds of unadulterated viewing pleasure at the following link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uw83rrA7oSk

 

My thought is to produce a series of these videos.  YouTube might not be the online site of choice for general counsel who care about benchmark metrics, but it is fun to create these videos.  More importantly, it provides people who favor this style of learning with some content.

Published on:

By

Some 970 law departments had participated in the General Counsel Metrics global benchmark survey when Release 4.0 went out on Dec. 12th.  The 65-page report is absolutely free to participating departments.  The fifth and final release will go out in late January.

 

Release 4.0 has 27 industries with their key benchmark metrics, along with a breakout by size and names of the participating companies.  Additionally, the compensation charts include base salary, cash bonus, and total compensation by industry.  Continuing the series started in Release 2.0, this latest Release includes findings on contract management and matter management software.  Finally, the blog posts at the end of the report explain Bayesian statistics.

 

If you or someone you know in a legal department care about performance metrics for in-house legal teams, go to this site and complete the few questions about 2011 data on staffing and spending: https://novisurvey.net/n/benchmarkmetrics2012.aspx