Rees Morrison’s Morsels #108 – additions to earlier posts and short takes

F-statistic analyses. The F-statistic tests the equality of the means in a group of figures, which is used sometimes to separate sets of figures into categories, as mentioned in Laura Empson, ed., Managing The Modern Law Firm: New Challenges New Perspectives (Oxford Univ. Press 2007) at 99 (Brian Uzzi, Ryon Lancaster and Shannon Dunlap) (See my post of Jan. 20, 2007: statistics with 28 references and May 31, 2006.)

Half million lawyers on LinkedIn. Steve Matthews, founder of Stem, said at the 2009 ABA Tech Show in April that LinkedIn has 563,000 lawyers with profiles. That number, according to Ari Kaplan in Strategies: The Journal of Legal Marketing, Vol. 11, June/July 2009 at 8, has shot up from 406,000 in December 2008 and 118,000 a year before. My group, Law Department Management, has a paltry 200 members (See my post of Sept. 22, 2008: social networks such as LinkedIn, with 7 references.).

Definitions of global, international, regional and local. From a benchmark survey, I saw these definitions (See my post of June 26, 2009: what is a “foreign law firm.”). These make sense as nomenclature for legal departments:

“Global/multinational (operating in many countries on several continents); International (primarily European or operating in multiple countries beyond the home country); Regional (from the home country and operating primarily in the contiguous region); and Local (from the home country and only operating there).”

Differences among loser-pay countries, with some details. An article in Focus Europe, Summer 2009 at 42, by a Clifford Chance lawyer, explains the courts’ powers to award costs of the prevailing party against the losing party in seven countries. In England, “it is uncommon for courts to award a party more than about 60-75% of its actual costs.” In the Netherlands, “legal costs are recoverable on the basis of how many briefs were submitted and how many times the parties appeared in court,” but “the reward is usually only a fraction of the actual costs.” Each of the countries covered has a different scheme, but the upshot is that the award of fees is not as great as I had thought (See my post of Oct. 22, 2005: insurance proceeds in a loser-pays jurisdiction; May 31, 2005: insurance where the loser pays the other side’s fees; May 10, 2006: why US litigation hasn’t spread to Europe; Aug. 21, 2006: Florida experience with loser pays; Jan. 12, 2009 #3: Germany’s rules; and May 21, 2009: conditional fee arrangements in England.).