Law Department Management Blog
General Counsel Metrics asked on its benchmark survey “What matter management system do you use?” Of the 190 other law departments so far that indicated either “none” or “n/a,” it seems that a “none” means what it says, however, “n/a” could mean there is a package but the person does not know the name or does not want to disclose it. In any event, that group has a median of four lawyers, so it is dominated by very small departments. Specifically, 32 of them have a single lawyer; 26 have two lawyers; and 21 have three. What most surprised me, however, and makes me suspect that “n/a” does not mean “no system” is that six companies reported more than 100 lawyers.
As a final note for this update on matter management systems, there were a dozen departments that reported a “custom” system. I assume that means they rolled their own, not that they licensed a package and modified it significantly for their own use. Now step back. Having reported on 125 departments in the group that have licensed a matter management package, it may be that for every ten doing that, one creates a bespoke system. Some of these, we should consider, have legacy systems from years ago; today, few if any law departments have IT or consultants write a system from scratch (See my post of April 3, 2011: early data on no-system departments.).