Another perspective on the law firms that were ranked highest on M&A deals is to look at the average size of the deals they worked on. That data appears in the following plot. The X-axis shows average deal size in billions of US dollars. The plot adds another piece of…
If a company wants to buy another company or has been approached by a company that wants to buy them, either company’s law department might like some guidance as to which law firm to retain. Since large deals announce the law firms representing both sides in mergers and acquisitions, companies…
If we had more data on the sizes of law firms retained by U.S. law departments, the industry would have some guidelines for typical distributions. For example, it might be a rule of thumb that roughly one-third of the law firms retained by a typical U.S. law department would be…
The U.S. legal system is the world’s most costly, according to a study released this week [PDF] by the U.S. Chamber Institute for Legal Reform (ILR). The study, conducted by NERA Economic Consulting, shows that the American system costs about one and half times more than the Eurozone average. I…
Aric Press writes in the Jan. 2013 American Lawyer at 134 about an analysis he did of law firm billing data from 37 substantial companies. CT TyMetrix provided the data and Aric explored various findings, such as total hours billed over a three year period and total external spending. …
The Wenham Law Group pays its network of experienced lawyers between $75 and $100 an hour, but bills clients a flat $150 an hour – for everything. As described in New England In-House, July 2012 at 5, the cofounder of Wenham Law group, Inder-Jeet Gujral, expects the firm to handle…
The 2012 Real Rate Report, produced by TyMetrix and the Corporate Executive Board, includes some data on 2011 litigation rates. As explained in the ABA Journal, July 2012 at 33, the average hourly rate for associates was $357. Whether those rates are representative of other services provided by law firms…
In the 2012 supplement to Bob Haig’s massive compilation on law departments, Successful Partnering between Inside and Outside Counsel (West 2012) at 42:18, the authors of a piece on project management mention an idea. An unnamed law firm “combined a timely ‘workload report’ sent by e-mail or fax early each…
A lawyer from Littler Mendelson, speaking at the InsideCounsel SuperConference, described the firm’s software to handle administrative agency charges. The firm developed the system to coordinate EEOC complaints on behalf of a huge employer who wanted to bring down its outside counsel spend. Built on Contract Express, the innovative system…
The General Counsel of Kaplan Inc., Janice Block, spoke on a panel at the InsideCounsel SuperConference. She described a quick-step process by which her legal team selects law firms to handle certain matters. When an appropriate new matter comes in, they pick six law firms and send them an e-mail…