Similar amounts spent per in-house lawyer by German and US law departments, and the same ratio

My overall point from a blog posts during the past few weeks about benchmark data from Germany has been the striking similarities between most of them and their US counterparts. Another example is inside and outside spending per lawyer and the ratio between them.

The General Counsel Benchmarking Report for 2009 of Otto Henning & Co. at 107, states that the internal legal spend per lawyer of its German respondents averaged €304,192 for internal costs and €339,832 for external spend. Those 2008 spend figures convert at 1.5 US dollars per Euro to $456,288 and $504,748, respectively. The total, if we add the averages, of nearly $1 million in legal spending per lawyer comes very close to figures derived from large US companies.

Of similar closeness, the ratio Henning found in German law departments of 47 percent inside spend to 53 percent external comes very close to the typical 40/60 figure for US law departments.