Law Department Management Blog
Law departments have to provide to their company’s outside auditors sufficient information for them to prepare their reports on contingent liabilities. The law department administrator from The Williams Companies, speaking at Mitratech’s Interact 2011 Conference, said that the department had developed a tool to help with the “complex and not fun to do” task.
Such a tool would quite naturally complement a matter management system See my post of March 12, 2005: comments about major reserves taken for litigation; March 12, 2005: funded matter management system in return for reductions in reserves; July 20, 2005: special-purpose reserve accounts; June 15, 2005 about credit for releasing reserves; Dec. 10, 2005: huge swings when huge litigation requires budgets and reserves; March 13, 2006: a crude summary of FASB Rule 5; June 15, 2006: releasing reserves; Dec. 3, 2007: savings targets, cash basis and reserves and P&L; Dec. 31, 2008: proposed FASB rule on disclosure of reserves for individual litigations; and Jan. 4, 2009: multiple cost centers, and one may be for reserves.).