Search / 55 posts tagged controlling costs

So many posts on Law Department Management have had something to say about the costliness of patent litigation that I decided to corral them here (See my post of March 10, 2005: IP litigation costs; March 29, 2005: patent litigation costs; May 1, 2005: patent costs when litigated; May 4, 2005: patent litigation costs; Oct.

One economic concept that applies to law departments is opportunity costs. As explained throughout Richard B. McKenzie, Why Popcorn Costs so Much at the Movies (Copernicus Books 2008), opportunity costs are the benefits you forego when you take an action.

To my earlier post on internal budget components (See my post of Sept. 9, 2008: budget elements.), I have added other posts that consider the mechanics and timing of law department budgets (See my post of May 30, 2005: accounts outside the normal budget; Sept. 27, 2005: outside counsel budget variance year to year; Oct.

The internal budget for a legal department covers all its costs other than what are paid to or through outside counsel. Since approximately 40 percent of a typical general counsel’s budget falls into the internal bucket, how the top lawyer manages those amounts makes a major difference (See my post of July 16, 2005: GCs and their business acumen regarding budgets.).

Yes, assuming the staff who handle the protection of patents and trademarks are part of the legal department, the costs of filing and renewing protection of those assets ought to be in the legal department’s budget (See my posts of Aug.

Thirty-four general ledger accounts handle the spending of a law department of a manufacturing company I assisted. The accounts seem generic for the most part, one exception being patents and another auto leases and operational expenses. I have embellished some of the accounts with prior posts on this blog.

Lexakos, a consulting group that advises on governance, compliance, and risk management recently released is Chief Legal Officer 2008 Strategic Planning Survey. Of the “over 100” chief legal officers who returned the survey, only 21 percent “trust outside counsel to manage costs and choose the best

What difference in terms of total legal spending might it make if one company is principally self insured and a comparable competitor has first-dollar insurance for litigation (See my post of Oct. 31, 2007: Fulbright & Jaworski data on insurance coverage against nine kinds of litigation; April 6,

A profile of Kellye Walker, North American general counsel of beverage-giant Diageo, in Legal Times, Vol. 30, Aug. 20, 2007, mentions that entire law department held its legal conference in Shanghai. Diageo’s legal department totals approximately 80 lawyers.

Previous posts have addressed different aspects of the fully-loaded cost per hour of corporate counsel (See my post of Oct.18, 2005: how to calculate a fully-loaded cost per lawyer hour; Nov. 16, 2005: links to other posts; Nov. 16, 2005: about $190 an hour; and Jan.10, 2006: estimate for US law departments of $150-170 an hour.).