Legal Current

The latest Managing Outside Counsel Survey Report by the Association of Corporate Counsel and Serengeti Law is out. Serengeti is part of Thomson Reuters.

It is detailed in a press release by the ACC and on the Serengeti website.

Among the key findings in the 10th annual report, the ACC and Serengeti say:

-Although compliance is still a key focus, controlling outside legal spending has returned to the top spot during the past two years similar to the start of the decade.

-The need to drive efficiency is leading to more value-based policies to reduce overall legal spend. Policies requiring project budgets, client consent for firm staffing, early case assessments, the use of alternative dispute resolution, client ownership of work product and technology requirements have all increased significantly in the past decade.

-Although legal spending is taking a growing bite out of company revenues, law firms are getting a smaller share relative to corporate law departments.

-Due to the greater willingness of in-house counsel to assert their bargaining power, along with the weak economy, we not only are witnessing the smallest increase in hourly rates in the past ten years, but in-house counsel are also anticipating similar record low increases for the coming year.

-The study does show that the number of in-house counsel with little to no company resistance to alternative fees has increased by 16% in 10 years; firms with little to no resistance to alternative fees has increased 69%.

-In-house counsel are increasingly turning to more sophisticated tracking systems to carefully understand where their money is going.

The survey was released by the ACC and Serengeti last week at ACC’s 2010 Annual Meeting in San Antonio, Texas.

Posted by Kevin Hunt in: In Business | Law firm business |