Category: Law Departments / Client Service

One reason legal costs are high is that the customers – general counsels – are cut of the same cloth as their BigLaw suppliers. I’ve predicted that CFOs would need to step in to wrestle control of legal costs (see, e.g., Who’s Failing – Clients...

A survey of Law Department Operations (LDO) Directors sheds light on how general counsels are – or are not – controlling costs.  “Law Department Operations Director” is a recent position. The First Law Department Operations Survey is published by Inside Counsel magazine and the Blickstein...

Do general counsels exercise their market power to influence outside counsel or just complain?  In June I wrote a “Modest Proposal” to regulate large law firms. My satire poked fun at the fact that GCs often complain about outside counsel yet rarely seem to use...

Jordan Furlong, editor of the CBA The National and blogger, in his excellent blog post, The rise of good enough, points out that too many lawyers “value the exhaustive pursuit of perfection over the simple expedient of just getting it done” and examines the “perfection”...

A couple of weeks ago I posted a “modest proposal” to regulate BigLaw. This post generated a fair bit of stimulating conversation. What’s interesting is that many seem to have taken my proposal at face value rather than the intended satire.  First, let me reference...

General counsels complain about large law firms: too costly, bad service, and clueless about the clients’ businesses. After the failure of GC’s many attempts to fix the problem, regulation is surely the solution.  This simple and easy idea struck me last week when I heard...

What are the right resources to solve a legal problem? How should you even think about this question?  Many answers are possible. Below, I set forth one model – a classic management consultant’s 2-by-2. On the x-axis, plot complexity of work, from low to high....

In the war for clients, results count.  Obvious as that may be, where are good metrics that measure legal results? In Legal Tech 2.0 I described a war for clients driven by service and results. Game-changing uses of technology can win battles. I suggested that...