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Case loads of in-house lawyers – survey data from Canada

“The State of Canadian Judicial Statistics: Trends in Canadian Civil Justice,” by The Fraser Institute [info@fraserinstitute.ca] presents results of a 1995 survey from about 50 members of the Canadian Corporate Counsel Association.

The respondents handled an average of 58 lawsuits each year during the previous five years. “Most (38) of these cases were about contract law, while 14 percent involved labour or employment issues. Personal injury, product law, and tax matters were the subject of, respectively, 11, 8, and 5 percent of reported cases. Parties to the case were other companies in 46 percent of all cases…”

The survey found that “final disposition took 39 months on average although, if the case went to trial [15% did] it took 47 months.”

Data for benchmarking in-house performance rarely appears, so I include this trove. Law departments in the U.S. would probably nod in agreement with these statistics, and find them useful to compare to their own performance.