The Point The conventional law firm — to maximize revenue — bills client companies hundreds per hour for the work of recent law graduates who are not yet capable of doing legal work unsupervised. (See here, here, and here.) Accordingly, conventional business law firms — despite showcasing “innovation” specialists —…
The Point On September 19 Ron Friedmann, a highly regarded authority on law practice management processes and technology at Gartner, posed the following question to other legal experts on Twitter: “If you could magically make stick one change in each of #BigLaw [large law firms] and corporate legal departments to…
The Point 1. With the launch of its new “Precision Research” platform, Westlaw promises to cut in half the time lawyers take to do their legal research, and offers more precise results. 2. Law firms bill hundreds per hour for legal research by junior / trainee associates who are only one,…
The Point 1. Responding to skyrocketing legal demands on business, the Legal function has two options: (1) assign one or more lawyers, in-house or in a firm, to deliver legal expertise in one-off tasks (draft deal documents, court representation, counseling business people on how their actions are likely to be…
The Point ALSPs — alternative legal services providers — use sophisticated business processes and technology to perform routine, recurring legal tasks at lower cost, with greater speed, and more accurately than law firms and in-house departments can do with attorneys. To Question 1: Yes. Conventional wisdom says that a potential economic…
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 Operational risk — the possibility that a business’ efforts might fail in their actual execution — poses the greatest peril to success of a company’s contracts. Operations take place outside of the corporate law function, so evaluation of the risks they pose should consist of practical judgments by…
The Point Under basic management disciplines: The customer learns the price they will pay in advance of the work being done. No one is assigned to do the work unless and until that person has been formally vetted as fully qualified to do the work. A one-person task is assigned to just…
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…
The Point Among people of various talents and skill sets required to conduct the corporate law function, who should the C-suite and board choose to be the one in charge? Attorneys in outside firms and in-house alike assume that only a licensed, practicing attorney can run Legal. C-suites and boards…