More reasons why general counsel might put off submitting data for a benchmarking study

Having offered ten reasons for initial reluctance to participate in a benchmarking study, I realized disappointedly I have not exhausted the topic (See my post of Aug. 29: 2008: ten reasons some CLOs defer benchmark surveys.). In fairness to general counsel who decline to include their department’s data in a benchmark survey, here are six more excuses.

1. Futile – they don’t believe they can change their department’s or company’s fundamentals, so why bother to learn about management metrics?
2. Higher priorities – demands on their time and attention of other sorts take temporary precedence
3. Not privy to all the data — feel they should be comprehensive and accurate even though close estimates are good enough
4. Political opposition – people in the company might use the data against them or keep attacking their costs
5. Mistrust of statistics – they think that benchmark metrics are too mathematically abstruse for their text-and-humanities mind to comprehend
6. Not concerned enough about management – just practice good law, that matters more than managing the department effectively.

Justifications that are perhaps plausible but not persuasive!