One week after this blog unveiled its first poll (See my post of Feb. 26, 2009: first blog poll.), I thank each of the dozen or so readers (as of yesterday) who took a moment or two to answer. The question was “If you reviewed bills submitted by law firms over the past six months, what do you esti...

Alex Arato, associate general counsel of CA Inc., recently described his law department’s RFP process. As reported in InsideCounsel, Jan. 2009 at 58, Arato solicits around five to seven firms for proposals on individual matters. That number makes sense (See my post of Oct. 26, 2007: seven tips for...

A long article in the ACC Docket, Vol. 26, Nov. 2008 at 30, thunders that a law department fares better in litigation if it “makes winning in an out of court the fundamental priority in dealing with all – repeat, all – cases that lack merit.� Joseph Speelman, joseph.speelman@lyondellbasell.c...

Many posts have appeared on this blog about guidelines for outside counsel (See my post of July 11, 2008: guidelines for outside counsel with 16 references; and Aug. 5, 2008: reservation of rights to review bills.). Those musings and my recent consulting projects led me to write about five problemat...

According to an Incisive Media article, Greenberg Traurig worked hard in 2006 to win Alcoa’s original contract for patent work. The firm went through several interviews and submitted a lengthy written proposal with biographies of its key IP attorneys. The term I want to emphasize, however, involve...

Many in the US legal industry probably believe that big law departments mostly hire big law firms. After all, deep pockets face more lawsuits, for more millions of dollars, and on more cutting-edge transactions than do their smaller competitors. Accordingly, they routinely turn to law firms with hun...

All the techniques in the world for outside-counsel cost control make barely a dent unless the in-house lawyers who direct firms willingly set their shoulders to the yoke. The hard pulls of choosing not to retain counsel, but if so of then choosing a good but lesser-known and less costly firm, and e...

In January of this year, John Lipsey, VP Corporate Counsel Services at Martindale-Hubble, surveyed thousands of corporate counsel in the U.S. – without regard to whether or not they had a known relationship to Martindale. Some 730 responded. He wrote about the results on the Martindale-Hubble blog...

A cause of law-firm vulnerability, where a client wields too much clout, is law-department power. Here is what a small item in Law Firm Inc., Vol. 6, May/June 2008 at 14 offers as a way to think about this dynamic, based on the comments of an Altman Weil principal. Ward Bower was giving two yardstic...

When an in-house lawyer needs to retain a law firm, the simplifying assumption outsiders make is that many firms of equivalent ability are available to vie for the privilege. Something close to a perfect market exists: many willing buyers transact with many willing sellers and economists are charmed...