Law Department Management

Statistics compilation débuts in Release 2.0 of GC Metrics benchmarks, along with data 500+ companies – why don’t you join in?

Release 2.0 of the General Counsel Metrics global benchmark survey will go out in early August. It looks set to have more than 500 participating companies, on the way to a thousand this year. A benefit to be introduced with...

A small attempt to stimulate collective thinking on law department operations

I tried something for the first time. I prepared a decent draft of an article to be published and circulated it for comments to about a half dozen people whose thoughts I would value. Academics do that all the time...

A benchmark metric worth fighting for: lawyers per army combatants

During the Iraqi “surge,” the “Army had one lawyer or paralegal for every 240 combatants, and these legal professionals have ever more say over battlefield decisions. That is leaving aside the judge advocates general (or JAGs), who offer guidance on...

Reflections prompted by publicity regarding the ACC’s 2011 Census Report

The Association of Corporate counsel (ACC) collected data in the spring of 2011 and recently made it available in its 2011 Census Report. Based only on promotional material available on ACC's website, here are my initial thoughts. http://www.acc.com/legalresources/resource.cfm?show=1306363 The ACC...

Wisdom about law departments and metrics from a GC serving as an interim CEO

Tom Kilroy, the General Counsel of a UK company has another role: “For the past three months, I've occupied a line management rather than a legal role, as acting Chief Executive Officer of a publicly listed company with 4,200 employees,...

If there are something like 80,000 publicly traded companies in the world, how many privately held companies with law departments might there be?

A Google search for “list of US publicly traded companies” turned up a link that referred to a Bloomberg directory with “over 33,000 companies.” The web site of Credit Risk Monitors claims to identify 20,899 public companies in the United...

Rates and cost per hour comparisons between inside lawyers and lawyers at law firms in the United States

This blog has often referred to the fully loaded cost per hour of corporate attorneys. It has also from post to post provided data on the effective hourly rate of law-firm partners and associates. More recent data came as to...

Two “proven” profitability techniques of law firms that law departments should refuse

An article in Law Practice, July/August 2012 at 40, describes "15 proven profitability techniques" for today's law firms. Two of them raised my eyebrows and should do the same for general counsel. Under the technique "unbundle operating costs from case...

Five categories for how your law firms might be rating you

In Law Practice, July/August 2012 at 14, a law firm consultant describes a “client scorecard.” With it, your law firms might rate you on five categories: "level of cooperation”; “how enjoyable your work is”; how profitable your work is; your...

Somewhat misleading data about law departments and e-billing: leading and laggard countries

A former executive of two matter management and legal e-billing companies, Jeff Hodge recently wrote a white paper for Bridgeway, one of the leading providers of both kinds of software. Entitled Legal Spend Management: An International Perspective, it discusses at...