The Point The above from a headline in Corporate Counsel (subscription required) last week. Nathan Cemenska is an attorney who is Director of Legal Operation and Industry Insights at Wolters Kluwer ELM solutions. In a report issued earlier this month, LegalVIEW Insights volume 2023-1: Law firm rate increases, he contends…
The Point Earlier this year I summarized Casey Flaherty’s exhaustive study of what’s overwhelming corporate Legal, and why it matters: “For most companies, the legal system’s demands on corporate Legal exceed that business function’s capabilities to respond … So some tasks vital to a company’s legal safety go begging,…
The Point Consider federal district court Judge Vince Chhabria’s observation in ordering Meta (Facebook) and its law firm, Gibson Dunn, to pay almost $1 million to their opponents in In re Facebook Inc. on February 9. “This case is an example of a wealthy client (Facebook) and its high-powered law…
The Point In Part I of this two-part series, I argued that: 1. Our legal system’s demands on businesses persistently exceed Legal budgets, 2. The lawyers who run the corporate Legal function default to adding lawyer headcount when demands increase, and 3. Only professional management skills can increase Legal’s capabilities…
The Point Purchasing power is the single most potent form of leverage available to a company that wants to keep law firm fees within manageable bounds. But passive acceptance — not robust negotiation — is corporate Legal’s typical response to law firm price demands. In the 1st Quarter of 2023,…
The Point Demands on corporate Legal functions increasingly exceed their budgets, driven by proliferating regulatory and litigation pressures, and due to persistent needs for contracting, compliance, and day-to-day advice (see here and here). Meanwhile, survey data show that 88% of general counsel plan to reduce the overall cost of Legal…
The Point From Radiant Law Founder Alex Hamilton’s brief interview video contained within LexisNexis’ lengthy new report, Calling Time on the Billable Hour: “When we started Radiant, what was absolutely clear to us was that the incentives were all messed up within law firms … If you’ve worked … like…
The Point My previous article reported that an internationally prominent alternative legal services provider (ALSP), Axiom, had launched a law firm as its wholly-owned subsidiary in Arizona — with operations and offerings of both ALSP and law firm fully integrated into each other. Last year, Elevate Services, another internationally prominent…
The Point In every U.S. jurisdiction except Arizona and Utah: “A lawyer or law firm shall not share legal fees with a nonlawyer ….” (With exceptions set forth here that don’t apply to this discussion). In plain terms, American Bar Association Rule 5.4, and its counterparts in the legal “ethics”…
The Point I once asked Ben W. Heineman, Jr., legendary GE General Counsel under Jack Welch during the years I served as an executive at GE: “What’s the one key to managing resources in a company’s law function?” Heineman’s unhesitating reply: “Segment! Segment! Segment!” As he explains in his book,…