App1: Genu

Genu

Genu is a product we reviewed last week and is currently in beta. Genu is a knowledge management system, designed by the star attorney investigator Chris Hoyer, also a principal at the firm James Hoyer. Really cool interface and usability. The most awesome feature, we think, of this really easy to use, secure tool is that it allows you to build a narrative first, you can continue to load data and corroborate your narrative as you go along. It’s got a facebook like feel and allows users to network and collaborate on the platform allowing for transparency as well. Will totally change the way knowledge is managed in larger cases.

Attorney Support ServicesComplete projects and close cases with confidence. Award winning services.--
The most innovative pricing plan for legal support
http://www.legaleasesolutions.com
Best Corporate Services - 2011
Best Litigation Support Provider - 2010

Best Corporate Services - 2011

Best Corporate Services - 2011LegalEase wins an award for the 4th year in a row
This is getting to be a habit - a good one. LegalEase has been recognized once again for providing best of class services to its clients. Its just an indication that our clients mean a lot to us. A huge thanks to the clients that made this happen and if you haven't so far, go ahead - get your piece of sweetness!

Attorney Support ServicesComplete projects and close cases with confidence. Award winning services.--
The most innovative pricing plan for legal support
http://www.legaleasesolutions.com
Best Corporate Services - 2011
Best Litigation Support Provider - 2010

The rat race has ended …. (well there are alternatives)

Lawyers today have an option, to work at top law firms, have lower billable hour targets, have a life and opt out of the rat race. A recent article in the New York Times highlighted how large law firms have been setting up operations in lower cost semi-urban centers across the States for lawyers who can apply for a ‘career associate’ position. The career associate position will accommodate lawyers who will take on a lower billable hour target and never get on the partner track.

Law firms today are morphing (finally) into how successful corporations operate. There are a few who can bring in the business, manage the firm and perform at the executive level. There are others who are content to practice their profession and don’t require the i-need-to-be-a-partner aspiration as a prerequisite.

This model has some clear advantages. This alleviates the reverse pyramid effect that plagues many midsized law firms where the number of partners to associates tends to grow, having more and more partners do a lot of the work, affect client acquisition and retention and leading to an eventual implosion of the law firm .

The downside to all of this, lower pay grades for career associates, which directly affects the attorney’s ability to service the large law school loans they usually inherit with the degree. Maybe it’s time that law schools reassess their fee structures and look at ways to reduce the cost it takes to become an attorney.

So the market continues to change with law firms reducing billable rates, alternative and flat fee billing arrangements, career associate positions being introduced, legal outsourcing and technology, all playing influential roles in shaping the future of the legal industry. It will be interesting to see how quickly, if at all, a highly insulated industry reacts to the market pressures being put on it and if it has the wherewithal to transform into a lean efficient and effective machine.

So things are getting better…… really?

The AM Law Daily recently reported that April saw an increase of 1500 legal jobs. This combined with the New York Times  article on the American Lawyer report that there is significant growth in 2010 over 2009 seemingly puts the attorney market back on track.

Some other statistics from the American Lawyer report include

• -          4% increase in law firm revenues
• -          profits per partner went up by 8.4%.
• -          Baker McKenzie came out top with $2.1 billion in revenues
• -          Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz declared $4.3 million in partner profits!

So with all the challenges in the economy the big law firms are seemingly steering their way into profitability and growth.

Meanwhile, Hildebrandt  released a report on May 6^th 2011 that Big Law continued to feel the effects of the economic crisis in 2010, with;

• -    Almost 2,900 fewer lawyers working (in 2010) for the largest 250 firms than the year before. 
• -        And those losses are on top of the 6,600 lawyer decline in 2009.
•      Also, the Economist reports “Clients became keener to query their bills—and to demand alternatives to the convention of charging by the hour, such as flat, capped or contingent fees.”

So how does one grow revenue, increase partner profits? Cutting 9,500 attorney jobs may be one way. All in all, Big Law has reacted swiftly by cutting jobs, driving overall hourly rates down and creating alternative billing arrangements for their clients. This has obviously started to bear fruit.

Technology Reaching Into The Courtroom

The New York Times recently featured an investigation of how technology -- especially online searches -- is shaping jury selection.

One striking part of the article is how reticent attorneys and jury consultants were to even speak to Reuters Legal on the subject.

"Ten law firms and five jury consultants declined requests from Reuters Legal to observe them building juror profiles, many saying they weren't sure judges would approve."

"Lawyers don't know the rules yet," said John Nadolenco, a partner at Mayer Brown in Los Angeles. "It's like the Wild West."

But while few are talking about it on the record, it's clear that this is a topic begging for official guidelines.

"Jurors are like icebergs -- only 10 percent of them is what you see in court," said Dallas-based jury consultant Jason Bloom. "But you go online and sometimes you can see the rest of the juror iceberg that's below the water line."

While most agree there is a lack of hard and fast rules as of now, one firm did provide access.

Alabam's Wooten Law Firm allowed Reuters Legal access as their paralegal "scanned Facebook, MySpace and Twitter, and used Google searches to find jurors' names on the websites of government agencies, school boards, local companies, and sites that contain property records. Links to each site were assembled in a spreadsheet."

In terms of precedent, a New Jersey Superior Court judge did bar counsel from googling potential jurors in the courtroom because the opposing counsel had not brought laptops to court, ruling that use of the internet provided "an inherent advantage regarding the jury selection process."

However, appellate judges held that the trial judge had improperly prohibited the online research, writing that the "playing field was, in fact, already level, because Internet access was open to both counsel -- even if only one of them chose to utilize it."

As the article summarizes, "the federal courts so far have not addressed the issue of online vetting of jurors, and just two states, Missouri and New Jersey, have said it's acceptable in some forms. But judges and lawyers, even in those states, still seem to be grappling with the practice."

Payment of Attorney’s Fees to Putative Trustee from the Trust under Texas Law

Question : Can a trustee, whose standing as trustee is being challenged by a beneficiary of the trust, use trust assets and income of that trust to pay for its defense of that suit? 
Short Answer: When the suit is to defend the trust property and a trustee acts reasonably and in good faith, the trustee may get reimbursement for the litigation expenses from the trust assets.  However, when defense of the suit does not benefit trust property, such as expenses related to litigation resulting from the fault of a trustee, the trustee cannot get reimbursement for the litigation expenses from the trust assets.
more...

Additional 2011 Projections

Last week we looked at legal market projections from Hildebrandt Baker Robbins in their 2011 Client Advisory.

That report also contains additional data compiled by the Citi Leaders Council Survey and Thomson Reuters.

The Citi Leaders survey comprised 48 large law firms and found:

• Respondents project using AFA's for 15.4% of their firms' revenues in 2011, up from 12.9% last year.

The Thomson Reuters survey polled the leaders of 78 large law firms last year as part of their Legal Executive Briefing and found:

• 96% of respondents indicated they expect increased use of AFAs during the next three years.

• 89% forecast increased use of pre-matter budgets.

• 71% expect increases in their use of teams to manage matters/projects.

• 61% percent expect increased use of contract lawyers.

• 55% expect increased use of non-lawyer project managers.

• 43% expect an increase in the outsourcing of routine legal activities.

These are significant expectations for evolving business models, and the Hildebrandt Client Advisory summarizes these projections with this:

"We fully expect that the experimentation with new service delivery models and new pricing strategies that we have seen over the past couple of years will continue and expand in 2011. Thus, we believe that firms will continue to focus on project management skills and other techniques for improving efficiency, including the outsourcing of legal and non-legal aspects of their work and the use of technology to automate workflows and to reduce the number of staff required."

Re-Thinking The Service Delivery Model

Professional services and firm management consultants Hildebrandt Baker Robbins released their 2011 Client Advisory for the legal market.

Their comprehensive surveys highlight perceived legal trends in 2010, as well as the trends they believe will impact the market this year. Their discussion of Management Challenges opens with two telling paragraphs:

"Much has been written over the past two years about the changing delivery model for legal services and the need for firms to re-think their underlying assumptions about work processes, pricing, infrastructure, and administrative support. While some of the bold predictions of revolutionary changes in the structure and work of firms have no doubt been overblown, there is no denying that the market is changing and that some firms are beginning to use the redesign of their service delivery models to good competitive advantage."

"As Mike Dillon, the General Counsel of Sun Microsystems has observed, “The reality is that we are in the early stages of a seismic shift in the traditional cost and delivery model for legal services. I see it every day in my interactions with the law firms that support us and in my discussions with peers at other companies.”

The report notes that while the billable hour is still considered the "normal" model, "there has clearly been a noticeable increase in the use of AFAs (alternative fee arrangements) and the evidence suggests that this trend will continue in coming years."

The Hildebrandt survey encompassed more than 200 companies, and looked at 2009 actual number along with expected 2010 numbers and found:

• 41 percent indicated they had used contractually fixed fees in 2009 for up to 10 percent of their outside legal work.

• 20 percent also reported they had used contingency fees for up to 10 percent of their outside legal work.

• 19 percent indicated they had used value or incentive billing.

• 8 percent stated they had used portfolio pricing (i.e. the use of fixed fees for a series of projects or cases or for projects occurring).

• 61 percent projected an increase in the use of contractually fixed fees in 2010.

• 55 percent projected increased use of value or incentive billing.

• 45 percent projected increased use of contingency fees.

• 36 percent projected increased use of portfolio pricing.

The Hildebrandt survey certainly seems to indicate that alternative models have moved beyond simply gaining traction; they seem now to be part of the permanent landscape.

Five Forces

While Richard Susskind's book "The End of Lawyers?" is always a hot topic when discussing trends in the business of law, Mark Gerow makes a compelling argument in Law Technology News that the market forces Susskind describes were first outlined by Michael Porter's "Five Forces" back in 1979.

"Five Forces" detailed the following market forces that impact any industry (not specifically law) as:


Within this context, Gerow highlights how these forces are effecting the current state of the business of law.

• "Clients have more bargaining power due to increased options for sourcing legal services (both geographically and in terms of method of delivery.)"

• "The threat of new entrants has increased in certain segments due to globalization."

• "The threat of substitute products (such as outsourced e-discovery) has increased."

• "Rivalry within the industry is high due to the barriers of exit (a law firm can't choose to switch to healthcare services if the legal market becomes too crowded, it must "stand and fight".)"

It's interesting to view the legal industry through this broader lens, crystallizing the impact the internet has had in increasing competitive pressures on a legal industry that had been largely insulated from theses dynamics in the past.

The E-Discovery Balance -- Technology And The Legal Team

Last week we looked at the role of some software technology in e-discovery, concluding that while software is an important tool, it is not a substitute for attorney participation.

Freelance writer Jason Krause wrote an interesting piece last month for Legal Technology News that delves further into the burgeoning studies being conducted to try to determine that optimal balance between technology and human activity in large scale data collection.

Krause highlighted the Text Retrieval Conference (TREC), an initiative co-sponsored by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the U.S. Department of Defense. One of TREC's missions is to encourage research in information retrieval based on large text collections.

According to Law Technology News, "for several years now, the Text Retrieval Conference Legal Track has tested different types of computer searches to create industry best practices for searching electronic records in litigation. In 2008, the project added a new investigation into the role of human researchers in improving the search results from computers, called the Interactive Task."

"Dan Brassil, manager of Linguistic Technology with H5 says, "Computer algorithms are getting better, but they will never get the same results as when there is a person in the loop or human intervention is part of the search process. The question is where the humans fit into the picture."

"Researchers in the TREC project are discovering there are roles that are best provided by machines and those done by human beings. "We use humans to do what they are very good at, which is to make nuanced judgments in specific cases," says Brassil. "But they are not so good at judgments across a lot of documents. People get tired, allow inferences to creep in, and you never know what a person will say in terms of consistency. That's where machines come in."

While the test groups employed fundamentally different approaches (e.g. using complex questionnaires to refine the up-front search scope vs. employing a computer-based learning tool to rank responsiveness), the TREC researchers concluded:

"Machines should do the grunt work of review, but members of a legal team need to:

• Consider scope, timing, and nature of the request to determine what approach may work best. Think about whether there is time to gradually seek every responsive document possible, or if a more targeted approach is needed.

• Identify the custodians who understand the documents in a collection and discover what they know about those documents.

• Capture the language from responsive documents and incorporate it into search terms that approximate the language actually used.

• Continually perform control checks. If responsive documents are not being found, reconsider and refine search strings.

Unfortunately, there is no definitive answer about the division of labor between man and machine. But the TREC topic authorities noted that teams that failed to think ahead about how to define relevant documents and relied on computing power to find documents fared the worst. "It's well understood that human review and machine review have limitations," says TREC Legal Track researcher Gordon Cormack. "In the next few years we hope to find the balance between them that mitigates those natural flaws."

E-Discovery Software

Last year, The Wall Street Journal reported on a BTI Consulting Group survey indicating that large companies intend to spend more than 7% of their litigation budget on e-discovery this year.

The ABA Journal cited the article, noting that:

"The right software can help reduce the number of documents needing attorney review, helping save money..."

For example, Morgan, Lewis & Bockius used “predictive coding” software made by Recommind Inc. to review millions of pages of documents in less than a month.

Cisco recently started utilizing the same software.

As Recommind explains, Predictive Coding is "a patent-pending technology and workflow which automatically analyzes, prioritizes and codes all documents in a collection as part of litigation or regulatory or internal investigations."

However, as the Recommind site also explains, predictive coding is not a replacement for attorneys.

It is simply a more efficient addition to the sorting component of the workflow and documentation process -- a process that still requires attorney review and analysis, which is itself an area abundant with potential added efficiencies and cost savings.

Happy New Year!

Wishing you a healthy and happy New Year

From all of us at LegalEase Solutions

Less Than Happy Holidays For Associates

The outlook gets grimmer for associates, as several sources highlight their rough road.

As we previously discussed, The National Law Journal last month reported a 1.5 percent drop in the total number of associates at the country's 250 larges law firms.

Last week, the AmLaw Daily reported on the latest Robert Half Legal Hiring Index, in which seven percent more respondents said their firms intend to add jobs in the first quarter of 2011 over the the fourth quarter of 2010.

That would appear to be good news, except for this caveat:

"Fifty-two percent of respondents reported difficulty in finding skilled legal professionals. According to Volkert at Robert Half, this suggests that while law firms and legal corporate departments may have openings, they are mostly interested in candidates who are currently employed."

To dampen the outlook even further, simply being an employed associate doesn't seem to mean what it used to. The ABA Journal recently wrote:

"Some associates who managed to avoid layoffs now lack the exposure and experience of their peers from three to five years ago."

According to that article, the unexpected consequence of the recession is that many associates who retained their jobs spent the last two years doing "pro bono work and marketing", resulting in an unprecedented lack of real experience.

"Across the board at leading law firms in Chicago, Los Angeles and New York City, there are associates who haven’t gained the experience compared to years past, says Sheri Michaels, a partner at legal recruiter Major, Lindsey & Africa in New York City."

Which leads legal recruiter Amy McCormack to observe yet another potential change to the business of law:

"The dearth of experienced associates is even more reason for firms to abandon traditional class distinctions and evaluate junior lawyers on actual experience and legal skills."

Deeper into the Citi Private Bank Law Watch Survey

The AmLaw Daily last week featured some continuing coverage of the Citi Private Bank Law Watch Third Quarter 2010 results.

Citi Private Bank's Law Firm Group chairman Dan DiPietro and senior client adviser Gretta Rusanow expanded upon some of the findings of the recent comprehensive survey, emphasizing:

"... an increasing willingness on the part of general counsel to branch out beyond their traditional law firms are forcing many law firms to compete on price, and others to innovate in order to be profitable and sustainable in this changed market."

DiPeitro and Rusanow write that they've spent "the past three months, having traveled throughout the U.S. and London conducting roundtables with managing partners of over 150 firms, meeting with individual law firms, and learning how firms are responding to this flat market..."

One of the prominent themes they're hearing is "the constant pricing pressures firms face, and how they are responding to these pressures."

They report that two shifts in the traditional business model are leading the altered landscape:

New Low Cost Competitors

• DiPeitro and Rusanow report that the general counsel they've spoken to are facing unrelenting pressure to internally reduce outside legal costs and are now more open than ever to "other options given the availability of off-shore legal service providers, and Am Law Second Hundred firms prepared to offer services at a lower cost than the traditional law firms."

• DiPeitro and Rusanow also note that "Am Law 100 firms have commented to us about the increased competition from these alternative providers, as well as from smaller firms who are able to provide legal services at significantly lower rates because of lower cost structures."

Alternative Fee Arrangements -- Pricing and Project Management

According to DiPeitro and Rusanow, "In addition to simply discounting fees, we see an increased focus on alternative fee arrangements (AFAs)."

While AFA's are becoming more standard, the task now is to work the kinks out. To that, DiPeitro and Rusanow broke it down even further:

• The first challenge is "how to accurately price services at the outset. Firms have started to consider how they might mine data in their practice management systems and knowledge management systems to create accurate cost predictions for matters. Some firms have formed committees composed of IT, finance, knowledge management, and practice group representatives working together to identify the common characteristics of various matters, and in so doing, improving the predictability of matter costs. In other words, these firms are moving from a reactive stance to a more strategic, scientific approach to pricing of legal services."

• "The second challenge firms confront is, once they have agreed to an AFA, how can they ensure that the work will be completed within the agreed scope and to budget. To do so, some law firms are retaining professional project managers. Other firms are placing that responsibility on lawyers by conducting project management training sessions for partners and attorneys in the firm."

Interesting the trends we started looking at 18 to 24 months ago are now becoming firmly rooted in the new normal.

The Law School Disconnect

A couple interesting posts this past week highlight conflicting trends on a collision course.

The Law School Admissions Council reported that the number of people taking the Law School Admissions Test last October was the second highest ever.

A closer look at the LSAC's chart shows this is part of a greater trend.

• The highest number of October test takers in the history of the exam occurred last year.

• The highest number of June test takers ever was this year.

• The second and third highest number of June test takers was last year and the year before.

• The highest number of December test takers was last year, with the second highest number of December test takers being the year prior.

• The highest and second highest number of February test takers also took place in the last two years.

However, as The American Lawyer summarizes their 2010 Survey of the Am Law 200 they conclude:

• The survey "suggests that many of the changes implemented during the recession--smaller associate classes, postponed start dates for new hires, reductions in the equity pool, and scaled-back profit expectations--are here to stay, at least for a while."

While at Above The Law, a debate over whether a 1L with "only" $21,000 of debt invested in law school should read the writing on the wall and drop out now.

80% of the responders concurred that the fiscally wise move would be to drop out now.

So we have a record number of potential law school students facing a record squeeze on entry to the profession. Something has to give.

Moneyball for Lawyers?

The November issue of National Jurist featured an article by University of Indiana law professor William Henderson advocating big changes in the way law firms assess which candidates to hire and train, and that article has prompted quite a bit of discussion.

The Wall Street Journal says that Mr. Henderson "pokes a variety of holes in the way big law firms have gone about their hiring for decades and decades — essentially luring the folks with the highest GPAs at the top 15 or so law schools."

The ABA Journal reports that Henderson's company, Lawyer Metrics, will apply a "Moneyball" approach to help quantify what qualities partners seek in an associate (referencing the best selling book about Oakland A's General Manager Billy Beane, who introduced a revolutionary statistical-based method of evaluating baseball prospects).

Henderson himself writes as an example that, "In 2007 and 2008, 46 percent of all entry-level associates at an AmLaw 100 firm were graduates of a Top 14 law school . . . Yet, during this same period, 39 percent of lawyers promoted to partner were from Top 14 schools. Further, as of 2009, only 35 percent of general counsels for a Fortune 500 company had graduated from a Top 14 school. This suggests that the advantage of higher test scores and academic pedigree diminishes rather than compounds over time — at least for partnership or general counsel positions."

Steven Harper at AmLaw Daly voices concern that Henderson's data-driven approach won't account for "politics and luck."


The Moneyball analogy is apt if Henderson is taking a bottom-up approach -- since Billy Beane first looked solely at unbiased statistical data and then taught managers and scouts a new way of assessing talent based on the data.

However, if as AmLaw Daly reports, Henderson's approach includes asking partners "about what values and traits they want in their lawyers", then his method is a top-down approach that is the exact opposite of Moneyball.

The goal should not be to assess the data in light of what partners already think they want.

If Henderson really wants to act as Billy Beane would, he needs to assess the data and then tell partners what they should want, even if what they should want is very different than what they think they want.

Thomson Reuters Embraces Legal Process Outsourcing

Thomson Reuters announced last Thursday that they'd aquired a leading legal outsourcing company, Pangea3, in a move that according to the compnay:

"Gives Thomson Reuters a leadership position in the fast-growing legal process outsourcing market."

Reuters' press release notes that:

• Peter Warwick, president and chief executive officer of Thomson Reuters Legal, said legal process outsourcing will be key to helping law firms and corporate legal departments be more responsive and cost-effective.

• The acquisition is true to their mission to help the legal system perform better, every day, worldwide; we will now bring to the legal marketplace a responsive, high-quality, transformative resource for a broad range of legal support work.

• This is particularly important as law firms and general counsel adjust to the realities of the 'new normal,' where efficiency, quality and responsiveness are paramount," he noted.

• The LPO marketplace is growing at more than 20 percent annually and projected to exceed U.S. $1 billion this year.

The ABA Journal reported that:

"Thomson Reuters already has about 8,400 employees in India, but this would apparently be the first time the company would be providing legal services themselves, rather than just legal information and consulting services to law firms and other legal providers. The move into providing legal services – and, at least in a small way, competing with its own legal information clients – comes at an interesting time, as the United Kingdom readies to allow companies to invest in law firms next year."

It is definitely an interesting development, but one that is clearly consistent with the Reuters' strategy "to develop world-class information, software and workflow solutions for legal professionals around the world."

Because legal process outsourcing fits squarely under the heading of "Workflow Solutions."

The Survey of Small Firm Economics

Last week we looked at the survey of the 250 largest U.S. firms, and this week we'll look at The Survey of Law Firm Economics, a joint project of ALM Legal Intelligence and The National Law Journal, for which the majority of respondents were firms with fewer than 150 attorneys.

Consistent with the largest firms, the small and mid-size firms also saw an historically unprecedented double dip.

According to law.com:

In 2008, revenue per lawyer declined by the largest percentage in 25 years — nearly 5%. In 2009, the figure dropped again, this time by less than 1%. Although the decrease was slight, a two-year drop in revenue-per-lawyer figures is unprecedented for firms taking this survey.

And yet, according to the report, small and mid-size firms actually increased profitability by:

• Aggressive cost cutting.

• Expense per attorney dropped by 5% in 2009, the largest ever decrease in expense-per-lawyer.

• Expense-per-lawyer also dropped in 2008, making it the first consecutive year drop in that category since numbers have been tracked.

• Net income was also up by 2.7%.

• However, actual realization rates dropped 2%, and partners wrote off 7% more of their time than in 2008.

• Billable hours also dropped for both partners and associates.

So, if billable hours were down and clients were paying less of their bills, was aggressive cost cutting the sole component of the rise in net income?

No. According to the report, small and mid-size firms also compensated by raising rates.

Hourly rates for the average equity partner are now at an all-time high among surveyed firms.

Which means we seem to have a disconnect. Because most observers feel the balance of power has shifted to the client side. And, as we've discussed, the current ACC Value Challenge expects firms to drop costs by 25% next year.

It would appear that expectations on one or both sides of the equation will have to change.

Results from the NLJ 250

The National Law Journal's annual survey of the 250 largest U.S.-based law firms by headcount is out, and the numbers are starting to crystallize our collective perceptions from the last two years.

The largest U.S. law firms trimmed another 1,400, making this the second consecutive year of cuts and the largest two-year decrease in headcount in the ranking's 33 year history.

Over the last two years, the NLJ 250 have shed more than 5% of their attorneys. The only other consecutive two-year decrease was 1992-93, which saw cuts totaling less than 2%. So, we're clearly in uncharted territory here.

Digging a little deeper into the numbers we see:

• More than half of the 250 saw decreases, while more than 2/3 of the top 50 saw declines.

• Some firms even saw double-digit percentage cuts.

• Associates, again, took the biggest hit, accounting for the majority of the decreased headcount.

• Where headcount did rise in 2010 was in the "other category", which includes non-associate attorneys, contract lawyers, and temporary attorneys.

According to Altman Weil consultant Ward Bower, "There are fewer lawyers producing more work and more revenue." Which means "there's been a reset."

"Law firms are unlikely to hire hordes of associates as they had before the 2007 recession any time soon, if ever."

And this seems to be another indicator that what used to be considered associate-level work is now being accomplished via new, emerging channels.

Collecting Law Firm Data

Last week we discussed the ACC Value Challenge's latest initiative to reduce law firm spending by 25% in 2011.

One obvious question was what tactics will Law Firms ultimately embrace to tackle such a hefty directive?

Corporate Counsel reported last week on one interesting new tool that may factor into the mix.

ACC's longtime general counsel Susan Hackett announced the organization's new initiative to ask law departments to post their internal data -- anonymously -- on an ACC site so all firms can compare how their departments are performing.

The vast majority of law firms track internal data like:

• Outside Legal Expenses

• Actual Performance Compared to Amount Budgeted

• Department Spending as a Percentage of Revenue

But this data is of limited value if it can't be measured against other firms, and that's what the ACC's new database seeks to correct. According to General Counsel:

"Only 24 percent of the survey's respondents said they have the tools or capacity to benchmark their legal departments against others. And that inability to compare, Hackett said, is preventing them from making more effective use of the numbers."

Hackett said they hope to have something up and running, "even if not fully 'populated,'" by mid-2011.