Keith Maziarek, director of pricing and legal project management at Katten Muchin Rosenman LLP, and Justin Ergler, director of alternative fee intelligence and analytics at GlaxoSmithKline, discuss the evolving nature of legal operations and management, the new face of negotiations between law firms and corporate clients, and the collaborative nature of their jobs.
Continue Reading Optimizing the Business of Law

LexisNexis’ Kris Satkunas looks at data-driven insights into legal departments’ billing and law firm consolidation activities.

CCBJ: The LexisNexis annual CounselLink report has become a useful benchmarking tool for legal departments. Tell us a little about its history and how it’s being used.
Continue Reading Benchmarking Spurs Creative Thinking on Fees

Jonah Paransky of Wolters Kluwer’s ELM Solutions explains how law departments will deliver value with operational rigor. His remarks have been edited for length and style.

CCBJ: How has the corporate legal department’s role expanded beyond its traditional responsibilities?

Jonah Paransky: There are several key items worthy of notice. The first is there’s been a sea change in expectations for how corporate legal departments will operate.
Continue Reading Corporate Law Departments, Expected To Be More Like Other Units, Face a Sea Change

Based on my research, during the past five years at least 90 different U.S. organizations published reports based on 190 surveys of U.S. law firms or law departments. That plethora of legal-industry surveys addressed a wide swath of management data. An analysis of the topics finds that compensation, e-discovery and outside counsel cost control were frequent topics, but all manner of other data inquiries were also carried out. The sponsors were primarily publishers, vendors of software or services, bar associations and consultants. At least half a dozen law firms and several trade groups also launched surveys.
Continue Reading Surveying the Surveys: There are many in the legal world, and the quality is uneven