Managing Legal
Fewer than 30% of companies made their law firms set a budget for tasks assigned to them.
Let alone manage their actual performance to such a budget. 2023 Thompson Hine survey (p. 10 of 16).
What other corporate function or business unit gets away with not having budgets for what it spends?
Corporate Legal can’t claim to “manage” what it doesn’t have budgets for. And payments to outside counsel take up 50% to 60% of its spending.
Most in corporate Legal are competent at the intricacies of the rules, at drafting contracts, and at knowing how judges and regulators think.
But they don’t know how, and are uninterested in, basic management disciplines that apply to everyone else in the business.
P&L-experienced executives in the C-suite need to demand of corporate Legal the same management disciplines they require of everyone else.