Profits per Partner

A high profits per partner rank sends an important message to clients: “we’ve got margin to burn.” 

Pushing risk across the table

We came across this excellent post by Patrick J. Lamb at In Search of Perfect Client Service awhile ago, and recently passed it on to colleagues whose outside counsel are doing the “alternative fee shuffle”.  We’re all kidding ourselves when we define “alternative fees” as “anything that’s not straight hourly rates.”  As Patrick says:

Point two five

For the longest time only quantum physicists observing special relativity, and judges (see, e.g., Cal. Code Civ. Proc. §473) could enlarge time.  Not to be left out of the fun, lawyers invented the “minimum billing increment”, i.e. the smallest unit of billable time to be charged for a work task.

Zealous Advocacy That Isn’t

So we’ve been in the middle of some (finally) productive m&a activity in the last few months.  Like daisies after a rainstorm, the dormant deal lawyers haven’t been far behind. And so are some of their maddening concepts of client service.

Your R&D is not my capital investment … it’s yours.

So last weekend, on a quiet nondescript morning, coffee freshly poured I thought, “No finer time than right now to review some law firm invoices.”  Ok, I didn’t really think that, but since this past week was going to be highly unproductive (it didn’t disappoint) it was time to get the mundane out of the way.

I pulled the first one off the stack.  The General Matters invoice.  There was only one entry:

“Review recent court decisions concerning intellectual property rights.  0.6 hrs.”

The expense statement was even better.

“LEXIS/NEXIS case searches for recent court decisions concerning intellectual property rights . . . . . $467.00″

Now all this would be perfectly acceptable if we had actually engaged the firm to do some research.  But we hadn’t.  Hmmm… this was probably just another time entry foul-up (expense charge too — same day, probably automated).  No big deal.  We’ll just call and have it fixed.

Serving lawsuits

Attention plaintiffs’ bar:

If you’re suing a corporation, a limited liability company or a limited partnership, please go to the secretary of state’s office website for that jurisdiction, look up the exact spelling of the entity and its registered agent’s name and address.

Draft and serve your summons & complaint accordingly.

Time spent: 5 minutes. Time saved fighting over proper service of process: priceless. For both sides.

Don’t Nag Us to Pay Legal Bills Early

Please don’t nag us to pay your December 10th invoices by year end.   

Floating Deadlines

We’ve all made the mistake of giving an assignment and failing to establish a clear deadline.  Outside counsel are no different from your staff or anyone else you’re collaborating with. 

Ask for Discounts… Now.

Nothing new here: things are slowing down (except bankruptcy and litigation, naturally.)  If you’re not asking for discounts, you’re not doing your job.

Not dormant, just redirected

This economy is creating all sorts of new “challenges” that have momentarily directed our ranting elsewhere.  We’ll be back shortly.

IHR