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Practice area benchmarks for seven practices

We lack reliable benchmark metrics for practice areas of law departments (See my posts of July 20, 2005 and May 28, 2005 on this missing set of metrics.). A few, though, have appeared on this blog.

Contracts (See my post of Jan. 6, 2006: contracts handled per commercial lawyer.);

Corporate secretary (See my post of Feb. 4, 2008: cost per entity maintained.);

Litigation (See my posts of Jan. 25, 2006: lawsuits pending; May 31, 2005: Canadian caseloads per litigator; June 15, 2006: claims per lawsuit; Nov. 22, 2007: litigation loads.);

Intellectual property (See my posts of Aug. 3, 2005 and July 18, 2006 on 27 metrics for patents; Dec. 21, 2005: per R&D spend; and April 9, 2006: trademarks.);

HR/employment (See my posts of Jan. 3, 2006: EEOC charges; June 7, 2006: lawyers per 1,000 employees; Jan. 6, 2006: employment.);

International mergers and acquisitions (See my posts of Dec. 22, 2005: deals per lawyer; March 19, 2006: foreign to domestic revenue); and

M&A (See my post of March 24, 2005: deal value per lawyer.).

Still incognito are metrics that suggest the appropriate staff for environmental work, antitrust and import/export. At some point these, too, as well as other practice group metrics, will be unmasked (See my post of April 7, 2006 on international lawyers in the US; and Dec. 22, 2005 on compliance spend compared to legal spend.).

Other posts related to this topic have been scattered throughout (See my posts of May 16, 2007: create an index of change; and Sept. 3, 2006: a retrospective on this topic.). Even posts on paralegals by practice area (See my posts of Dec. 22, 2006 and March 12, 2006.)