Law Department Management Blog
Examples of secondments. GC Cal., June 2008 at 23, has an article by Lorelie Laird – in which a noted law department blogger is quoted – that refers to several law departments that have taken advantage of secondments. Laird discusses examples from Bayer, General Electric and Cisco. The article doesn’t add much to what has been addressed in posts here, but it does note that Cisco pays for the salary of secondees as well as the costs of their benefits (See my post of July 17, 2008: secondment with 12 references; and Jan. 23, 2008: 10 references to secondment.).
Network for corporate secretarial services. An ad in Corp. Sec., Iss. 54, June 2008 at 43, promotes TMF www.tmf-group.com. TMF offers a global network of 79 company-owned offices in 61 countries. TMF helps with company registrations and registered office services as well as global entity management for multinational companies (See my post of Feb. 21, 2008 #2: law-firm networks with 7 references; March 23, 2008: ALFA; and Sept. 21, 2008: 5 associations at ACC conference, including the Bomchil Group.).
Fortune 500 legal spend. In 2007, the Fortune 500 companies surpassed $10 trillion in revenue, according to Diversity & The Bar, Vol. 10, Sept.-Oct. 2008 at 32. If we assume about five in-house lawyers for every billion dollars of revenue, a typical figure that takes into account all industries, these companies would employ approximately 50,000 in-house attorneys. If we assume 0.4 percent of their revenues goes to legal costs (excluding fines, judgments and settlements), a percentage that is middle-of-the-pack, that means about $40 billion, of which roughly 60 percent typically goes to outside counsel — $24 billion. A billion here, a billion there, soon we are talking real money!