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An Excellent Year for Private Law Firms

By Larry Bodine
January 31, 2007

Corporate counsel will outsource more legal work at higher rates in the coming year, and supervise the law firms less closely, issue fewer RFPs and request alternative fees less often, according to projections based on a survey by the Association of Corporate Counsel (ACC) and Serengeti Law. The survey shows that the balance of power has swung away from corporations and in favor of private law firms, which will continue to bill by hour and face less convergence,' or consolidation of legal work by a corporation to a small number of firms.

Huge Marketing Opportunity

Meanwhile, a huge marketing opportunity exists for well-connected lawyers. Corporate counsel usually find new lawyers through personal referrals, and retain individual lawyers rather than the firms they work with. The primary service corporations are buying are:

  • Litigation (34.3% of overall corporate legal spending);
  • Intellectual property (11.1%);
  • Employment/labor (9.9%);
  • Commercial transactions (7.1%);
  • Securities/finance (6.8%);
  • Real estate (5.6%); and
  • Regulatory (5.6%).

An area of 'client pain' has been created by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) and other legal requirements for corporate counsel to provide periodic reports about legal spending, exposure, status and results. Law firms can ease the pain and gain new business by making it easy for corporations to collect the information. The pressure to keep track of company activities now outweigh corporate concern about controlling legal costs, according to the report.

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