Netherlands ranks best, USA in the middle, and Singapore lowest on novel index of four key benchmarks [write me for the full results]

For this exercise, assume four benchmarks are key: lawyers per billion dollars of revenue, legal staff per billion, internal spending as a percentage of revenue, and external spending as a percentage of revenue. For each metric, I ranked all 48 countries that have participating law departments in the fourth release of General Counsel Metrics. Accordingly, the country whose median law department had the least lawyers per billion was ranked 1 for that metric; the country with the highest median ranked 48. I did the same for each country for each of the metrics. The total of the four ranks gave a cumulative country score that allowed me to sort and find the best and worst.

Number one, with a cumulative score of 62 (an average of a bit more than 15) was the Netherlands and its 32 departments. At the median was Belgium, with a cumulative score of 97 for its 13 companies. The USA trailed at number 7 with 106 (358 law departments) and Singapore’s 13 brought up the rear with 139. I could write pages about this first-ever effort to compare countries on their legal staff and spend, but I will defer.

My findings for this post focused on the 11 countries that had at least 10 departments. Together they have 590 departments, comprising 84% of the total benchmark group.
If you would like to see the results for the fuller set of 19 countries with at least seven law departments, e-mail me from your corporate account,at Rees(at)ReesMorrison(dot)com. I will send you the Excel file with the data.

Take part in the largest benchmarking database ever assembled for legal departments! Click here for the six-minute, confidential online survey based on your fundamental 2009 metrics.

Posted In: Benchmarks
| Leave a comment

Netherlands ranks best, USA in the middle, and Singapore lowest on novel index of four key benchmarks [write me for the full results]

For this exercise, assume four benchmarks are key: lawyers per billion dollars of revenue, legal staff per billion, internal spending as a percentage of revenue, and external spending as a percentage of revenue. For each metric, I ranked all 48 countries that have participating law departments in the fourth release of General Counsel Metrics. Accordingly, the country whose median law department had the least lawyers per billion was ranked 1 for that metric; the country with the highest median ranked 48. I did the same for each country for each of the metrics. The total of the four ranks gave a cumulative country score that allowed me to sort and find the best and worst.

Number one, with a cumulative score of 62 (an average of a bit more than 15) was the Netherlands and its 32 departments. At the median was Belgium, with a cumulative score of 97 for its 13 companies. The USA trailed at number 7 with 106 (358 law departments) and Singapore’s 13 brought up the rear with 139. I could write pages about this first-ever effort to compare countries on their legal staff and spend, but I will defer.

My findings for this post focused on the 11 countries that had at least 10 departments. Together they have 590 departments, comprising 84% of the total benchmark group.
If you would like to see the results for the fuller set of 19 countries with at least seven law departments, e-mail me from your corporate account,at Rees(at)ReesMorrison(dot)com. I will send you the Excel file with the data.

Take part in the largest benchmarking database ever assembled for legal departments! Click here for the six-minute, confidential online survey based on your fundamental 2009 metrics.

Posted In: Benchmarks
| Leave a comment

Compare the law firms you use by average years of experience of lawyers who charge to your matters

My hypothesis correlates size of law firm with average shortness of legal careers. The larger the law firm, the lower the average number of years out of law school of its lawyers. If you hire a 1,000 lawyer firm, all the associates on the matter and the relatively diminished input of the partner drops the average experience level. On the other end, if you hire a small firm, it is likely that a seasoned partner does a large part of the work. Large matters that require leverage should show such a “demographic” decline.

It would not be hard for a large law department to gather data that confirms or contradicts this hypothesis. A group of law departments could pool their data. The next step would be to test the correlation between average legal experience and cost or results. It would not surprise me if the average invoice size rises while the average biller experience drops.

Posted In: Outside Counsel
| Leave a comment

Ample holiday time for in-house lawyers according to recent survey

Nearly 2,000 in-house attorneys around the world completed a survey by Laurence Simons. From that 2010 In-House Global Salary & Benefits Survey at 12 we learn that almost 40 percent of them have 21-25 days of holiday per year and close to that many have 26-30 days. About 18 percent enjoy more than 30 holidays per year.

In the United States, in-house lawyers take off about 10 national holidays such as July 4th, Christmas and Thanksgiving. The report does not explain whether those allotments as described include established national holidays as compared to discretionary, personal paid vacation days (some military use the term “leave.”). Some companies also afford “personal days” and “sick days” (See my post of Feb. 22, 2009: vacations and holidays with 10 references.).

To request a copy of the full survey, write Naveen Tuli.

Posted In: Talent
| Leave a comment

Some scratches of the head regarding touted e-discovery costs by big US companies

The Wall Str. J, Nov. 23, 2010 at B6, cites data from a research and consulting firm regarding expenditures by the 1,000 biggest US companies on e-discovery. They are expected to spend about $1.3 billion in 2010. According to the cited report, that expenditure equals 7.1 percent of their litigation spending, up from 5.2 percent five years ago (a rise of one third, or something like 4-5% a year).

Being methodologically prissy, I wonder how many law departments keep track of e-discovery as a line item. Or are the metrics submitted based on guesses, impressionistic and influenced by the roar of industry hype?

Might it also be that the rise reflects a proportionate rise in how many documents are available electronically? In other words, the increase may match the workload, but spending on non-electronic discovery of hard-copy documents may have dropped off.

Second, on average for the thousand companies that means $1.3 million per year on e-discovery. Given the size of the companies, probably more than $2 billion in revenue at the small end, the figure doesn’t shock the conscience of the court. The median spend likely comes in below $1.3 million.

Third, even if documents are in electronic format, someone has to review some of them. Documents had to be reviewed way back in prehistoric days when only hard copy existed. My point is that we should focus on incremental spending costs spurred by electronic stores and tools not on total costs, some of which might have been borne pre-ED.

The point of the article is that software and techniques exist that tame the burgeoning bulk of electronic files (See my post of Sept. 8, 2010: costs of e-discovery with 11 references.).

Posted In: Non-Law Firm Costs
| Leave a comment

Older companies saddled with legacy legal costs; new ones not so burdened

A company that has been in business twenty years or more has often accumulated barnacles of legal problems – companies or assets sold with long-term liabilities retained, past mistakes with legal tails such as environmental cleanups, products sold or installed years before that are now class action magnets. New companies have smooth skin, no legacy legal wrinkles. They face current problems, but so do established companies, but the fresh-faced companies do not have scars to deal with.

Typically, the legal department is saddled with responsibility to cope with the forgotten drains, unremembered, unwelcomed, unrecognized, and unlikely to go away any time soon (See my post of March 18, 2005: perhaps 40% of spend looks backward; July 16, 2005: legacy litigation; Oct. 8, 2005: litigation lawyers who handle legacy issues don’t belong in any business unit; April 2, 2006: clients apathetic about legacy litigation; Oct. 25, 2007: dormant cases are usually legacy; July 31, 2006: appoint a czar to oversee orphan litigation; Sept. 9, 2010: intractable issues are an internal lawyer’s plight; and Nov. 1, 2010: corporate general ledger account.).

Posted In: Showing Value
| Leave a comment

A partial myth: workers with more monitor square inches are more productive

Debunking. I love it, but this one hit home. I have written positively about productivity gains for lawyers who use two monitors (See my post of Sept. 30, 2009: monitors with 6 references.).

Support for my conclusion came from a study in 2008 that found productivity gains of 30-50 percent for text and spreadsheet tasks. The bubble meets pin, however, in PC World, Oct. 2010 at 77. NEC, a manufacturer of widescreen displays, commissioned the study, which should give pause to its findings, and in fact the researchers found a bell-curve distribution. “For a single-monitor setup, over 26 inches is too much, while dual-display gains top out at 22 inches.” Even more tellingly, “If you’re planning on using that second display for e-mail, Twitter, or other Internet-related distractions, however, you’re probably going to end up being less productive overall.” Sigh

Posted In: Productivity
| 1 Comment

Legal risks avoided but, sadly, never to be measured – my column of last week

Just before the Thanksgiving break, InsideCounsel Exclusives published my column on risks and metrics. In essence, the two words do not go together. The coupling of risk and measurement is oxymoronic, much to the disappointment of those who manage law departments and want desperately to quantify their value. Click on this link to read the column from Morrison on Metrics (Nov. 22, 2010).

Posted In: Showing Value
| Leave a comment

Rees Morrison’s Morsels #140: posts longa, morsels breva

The plural of general counsel is general counsel (no s). Under the entry for “counsel,” no less an authority than R. W. Burfield, Ed., The New Fowler’s Modern English Usage (Oxford 1996) at 187, pronounces “(pl. unchanged: [long quote ending with] five prosecuting counsel”).” The magisterial book on usage offers no help on “law department” compared to “legal department.”

Car allowances for in-house lawyers are fairly common around the world. From the 2010 In-House Global Salary & Benefits Survey conducted by Laurence Simons (pg. 12) comes the astonishing fact, to American sensibilities at least, that approximately 55 percent of the 1,900 respondents enjoy a “car or car allowance” as one of their benefits. My impression is that only a few high-powered general counsel in the United States might have such a benefit (See my post of Feb. 26, 2006: as an officer, possible to have a car stipend.).

General semantics, our language shapes our thoughts. In the 1930’s, Alfred Korzybski, a scientist and a philosopher, laid the foundation for general semantics, the discipline that studies the relationships between the ways in which the words we use affect how we think. We frame the world in concepts that are limited by the words we have to express them. Trying to use words effectively, I embrace wholeheartedly the basic premise of general semantics.

“Vampire power” (aka “phantom power”) as unnoticed consumption of electricity. An article in PC World, Oct. 2010 startled me. Even when some devices, such as a desktop PC, are turned off, they consume watts if they are merely plugged in. “A typical American home has forty products constantly drawing power. Together these amount to almost 10 percent of residential energy use” – vampire power. The article doesn’t explicitly state comparable waste in offices. Think of the legions of fanged desktops, clocks, copiers, faxes, and chargers that suck up electricity all the time! It describes special green surge protectors and rechargers (See my post of March 11, 2009: conservation for law departments with 7 references.).

Posted In: Thoughts/Observations
| Leave a comment

Data on why lawyers leave their in-house position

From the 2010 In-House Global Salary & Benefits Survey conducted by Laurence Simons (pg. 8) you can see 15 reasons why lawyers might resign. “[O]ver a third (40%) said it was because they wanted a new challenge or to further their career in a new environment. The traditionally popular motivation of higher salary was third at 12%. Other factors included a desire for more responsibility (10%) and a better work/life balance (7%).”

The notorious career path perceived to lead nowhere pushes ambitious lawyers to find their way elsewhere. So does boredom. If all you can see is an unchanging in-box, shift companies and hope for a change of pace. Money matters, but given approximately market compensation, the far more important satisfiers ae the quality and prospects of good work. To request a complimentary copy of the full survey, write Naveen Tuli.

Posted In: Talent
| 2 Comments

Benchmark Survey

Click here to benefit from the largest benchmark survey

Onit

Onit

Rees Morrison

Rees Morrison, Esq., is an expert consultant to general counsel on management issues.
more...

Connect

twitter linkedin View Author's Justia Profile Subscribe to this blog's RSS feed

Monthly Archives

SiteMeter