Law Departments Will Be Able to Post and Peek at Others’ Data
Most law departments measure metrics such as outside legal expenses and legal spending as a percentage of revenue, but few know how their stats measure up against others.
Only 24 percent of law departments report that they have the ability to compare their performance against others, according to preliminary results of a survey (PDF) by the Association of Corporate Counsel. Now ACC plans to increase the percentage with a new online initiative, Corporate Counsel reports.
The law departments will be invited to post their data anonymously on the ACC’s website, so they can compare how they are doing. The group hopes to have the project running in a preliminary form by mid-2011.
ACC general counsel Susan Hackett revealed the survey numbers during a panel discussion at the group’s annual meeting in San Antonio. Corporate Counsel noted the emphasis on numbers. Wandering around the meeting, “you almost expect to see the badges dangling from the necks of the lawyers identify them by some metric (Reduced Legal Spend by 21.7 percent!) rather than a name,” the story says.
According to the ACC survey, 82 percent of legal departments measure outside legal spend, 76 percent measure performance against budget, and 67 percent measure spending as a percentage of revenue.
But only 22 percent measure cycle time to close cases, 29 percent measure percentage of legal spend on value based fees, 41 percent measure liabilities averted, and 43 percent measure wins and losses.
