The Point 1. The corporate law function costs too much and takes too long. 2. Most corporate law functions knowingly accept material amounts of waste in two major forms: (1) Rather than fixed fees agreed between lawyer and client in advance of the work, most pay outside lawyers by the…
The Point In a recent article, Bruce MacEwen, one of the three or four leading experts on lawyers and law firms, explains that those firms and the in-house law departments who hire them can’t keep up with the U.S. legal system’s increasing demands. Not at the current rate of increase.…
On Saturday morning (January 11, 2019), I glanced at the front page of the Wall Street Journal that I held in my hand as I walked up the driveway to my house: “MAX Chatter at Boeing Undercuts Its Public Stance”. The first line: “Striking internal messages released this week by…
Conventional law firms working to their profession’s prevailing business model — with its various forms of built-in waste — often claim to have a “customer focus”. And the in-house law departments who hire these conventional law firms may make the same claim. But creating waste — or tolerating that waste…
My most recent post — about a December 17, 2019 article entitled “10 Ways That Outside Counsel Disguise Overbilling” — cited a case where an expert in auditing law firms’ bills for inaccuracies found this: “The law firm charged 5.1 hours for work on a confidentiality agreement where opposing counsel…
“10 Ways That Outside Counsel Disguise Overbilling“. Headline of a December 17, 2019 article in Corporate Counsel, a prominent publication directed to in-house lawyers. Citing the Association of Corporate Counsel’s findings in its “2019 Global Legal Department Benchmarking Report”, the article begins with this statement of fact: ” … Large…
So says Alex Hamilton, describing the gist of his recent speech to a conference about innovation in law practice — specifically about the role of artificial intelligence in companies’ creation and management of contracts. A former partner at Latham & Watkins’ (2nd highest earning law firm worldwide in 2019 according…
Too many businesses find that they spend too much on lawyers — and get too little risk protection in return. But their executive management should not look to attorneys — outside or inside their companies — to fix this on their own any time soon. At least not without relentless…