How many in-house teams are attempting to influence law firm processes?

New research has found in the last year legal departments have increasingly tried to have a say in their panel of law firms’ methods and practices, as a means to ensure greater fee transparency.

According to Altman Weil’s 2018 Chief Legal Officer Survey, almost one in two (48 per cent) of law departments requires budgets from outside counsel and 83 per cent ask for budgets on major matters.

Further, one-quarter (24 per cent) of law departments are training in-house lawyers to manage outside counsel budgets. Read more...

The 2019 LawVision & Peer Monitor Pricing Survey: The Growing Prominence of Pricing within Law Firms

How a law firm prices its delivery of legal services has become far from a rote or obvious undertaking. Pricing has evolved to be of utmost importance as large law firms continue analyzing how to improve their profitability, convey their value proposition to clients, and impose more discipline on their processes and practices.

To take the temperature of this environment, LawVision and Thomson Reuters Peer Monitor collaborated on the 2019 LawVision & Peer Monitor Pricing Survey, offering answers to what firm pricing professions think about the many important profit and pricing questions circulating throughout the legal industry. The report also casts light on how law firms are coming to perceive their pricing methodology and how that perception is impacting firm strategy and profitability. Read more...

What Does Legal Procurement Think About Midsize Law Firms?

Because the term midsize law firmsmeans different things to different people, I thought I’d give you my definition before I talk about what legal procurement professionals think about them.

Take, for example, the Am Law 200 — by some definitions, those law firms would be considered midsize firms, and by other measures, they would be considered large firms. For the sake of this article, I am going to classify midsize law firms as those that provide several services and have more than a handful of lawyers. Read more...

Alternative Fees 'Finally' Gaining Currency as Biggest Firms Command a Premium

Clients are increasing their use of alternative financial arrangements, according to new data collected from LexisNexis’ e-billing platform CounselLink.

The company’s 2019 Enterprise Legal Management Trends Report, released Monday, looked at data aggregated from 7 million invoices and approximately 1.7 million matters. While in 2017, 9.2% of matters included a nonhourly billing component, that number rose to 12.2% in the latest period.

Kris Satkunas, director of strategic consulting for CounselLink and the author of the report, suggested that the talk that’s been brewing for years about moving away from hourly billing is starting to turn to action. Read more...

Rate Gap Widens Between Biggest Law Firms and Their Smaller Competitors

Feeling like the big firms are eating your lunch?

That’s because they are.

LexisNexis CounselLink released its sixth annual trends report today on corporate legal department spending, and there are some interesting highlights about where work is going, what companies are willing to pay for premium work, and what median billing rates are by law firm size, practice area and geography.

Perhaps the most telling statistic is the cavernous “rate gap” between what the largest law firms charge and what smaller firms can command — a gap that continues to widen. According to the report, firms with more than 750 attorneys have billable rates that are 53% higher than rates at the next tier of firms, those with 501 to 750 lawyers. This compares with a 45% gap reported in 2017, and a 40% gap in 2016. Read more...