Articles Posted in Choose Individual Lawyers

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The Point

Where corporate Legal needs the services of a specialist, it should look primarily among law firm partners for the practitioner who has spent years — more typically decades — focused on the narrow legal area in which the company’s need arises (more on this here and here).

Surprisingly, attorneys employed by such firms as associates — especially the larger ones — receive very little training for their work (see here, here, and here). Yet these law firms assign such associates alongside such partners and bill them at hundreds per hour for their supporting role.

Management lesson: Corporate Legal, to get the expertise its client company requires, should maximize the services of the specialists it really needs, and minimize the services of associates who role is mainly to bloat billable hours (see here and here about the law firm financial technique called “associate leverage”). Continue reading

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The Point

Past actual outcomes should determine who your company chooses as litigation counsel. Jeff Carr breaks it down this way:

“Effectiveness — was customer objective not met, met, or exceeded?

“Efficiency — was actual below or above agreed budget?

“Experience — Customer’s [satisfaction] with team?”

The legal profession — both in-house and in law firms — tends to skip the nuts-and-bolts due diligence required to understand such effectiveness, efficiency, and customer experience. It defaults instead to a loose proxy for these specifics: law firm reputation. Continue reading

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