The Point After an historic high number of law firm hours billed industry-wide in 2021, Q2 of 2022 has seen an historic year-over-year drop in those hours. This drop will likely cause major, near-term, upward price pressure on law firm rates. Traditionally, general counsels, the practicing attorneys who run corporate law functions,…
The Point It’s considered a best practice among lawyers in-house to “manage” work relationships with their law firms by writing rules for them to follow. “Outside counsel guidelines” they’re called. And they don’t work all that well as a substitute for more conventional management relationships. It’s common (subscription required) for…
In about 60% of legal matters, the law firm doing the work fails to estimate the amount of money needed to complete the task, according to a recent BigHand technology survey described in The Artificial Lawyer June 28, 2022 issue. This has two harmful implications: 1. Lax cost control:…
The Point The last few years witnessed headlines announcing a legal technology investment boom (here, here, and here). But — for all the publicity on the investor side — actual technology adoption among law firms remains slow. This Matters to Your Business A survey of 560 law firm attorneys taken…
The Point Business analyses — and decisions to which they can lead — are no better than the data on which they are based. Part I of this two-part series considers the tiny minority of legal matters priced to client companies on a basis other than attorney hours (a reported 16.8%), and…
The Point “In 2020, 16.8% of [corporate legal] matters had some portion of their billing under an arrangement other than hourly billing”, according to the most recent LexisNexis / CounselLink trends report on U.S. law firms’ charges to U.S. corporations (2021 report based on 12 months of data between January…
Lawyers have long engaged in loose and hopeful speculation that law firms will stop basing their charges on the time it takes attorneys to do their work, and that corporate clients will soon be able to pay legal fees based on a pre-agreed value of attorneys’ services. For instance, a…
The Point Legal journalists like to say that in-house counsel are much better positioned than outside lawyers to adopt labor-saving and accuracy-enhancing workflow processes, and the technology to support them, since they don’t have to maximize hours billed. Despite what one might expect, Thomson Reuters’ “State of the UK Legal…
The Point Many in the U.S. legal profession have long touted “pricing innovation”, promising corporate clients savings and cost certainty. As of 2022 these promises remain largely empty. Because in the U.S. corporate legal sector the billable hour continues to prevail. By a wide margin. So says the 2022 State…
News Item From the American Bar Association Journal, January 27, 2022: “Goodwin Procter is providing ‘thoughtfully curated weeklong’ trips to associates and some other billers, so they can get relaxation time on the law firm’s tab … The trips are valued at $5,000 to $10,000, depending on lawyer seniority. “Those…