Print

Contact: Melanie Brenneman  »  DataCert, Inc.  »  (832) 369-6157  »  pr@datacert.com

InsideCounsel/DataCert Survey Finds Corporate Law Departments Using Larger Budgets to Control Costs

In-House Counsel Turning to Technology to Slim Spend

HOUSTON, May 9, 2008 – Many corporate law departments have higher budgets than three years ago but still feel the pressure to decrease costs, according to a survey conducted by InsideCounsel magazine and DataCert.

The larger budgets reflect the latest trends for taming ever-increasing outside counsel spend.

“America’s economic turmoil and the ever-present demand by C-level management to cut costs company-wide have general counsel acutely aware of how their money is being spent,” said Tom Duggan, publisher of InsideCounsel. “Traditionally, outside counsel spend commands a large portion of a law department’s budget. It’s the obvious area to attack when you’re looking to save money.”

Outside counsel fee budgets have increased for 64 percent of the survey respondents and outside counsel fees have increased for almost half. This means general counsel have the continually delicate task of ensuring that higher fees don’t outpace the budget.

In an effort to curtail spend, corporate law departments are opening their doors to more attorneys. Compensation budgets have increased for 71 percent of corporate counsel as compared to three years ago. This gives law departments the opportunity to distribute more work to internal resources instead of farming it out to law firms, a strategy that nearly three-quarters of the respondents are currently using.

Law departments are also turning to technology to help them understand, control and reduce spend. Almost half of the in-house attorneys polled indicated that their technology budgets have increased over the past three years. And that money will be put to good use. Planned technology purchases within the next two years include e-discovery (23 percent), matter management (21 percent) and e-billing (14 percent) solutions.

“At this stage of the game, it becomes very important for law departments not only to research and implement technology that will improve processes and control costs, but also to leverage existing technology to help accomplish these goals,” commented Eric M. Elfman, president and CEO of DataCert.

The survey reveals that corporate counsel are using technology to help understand where their money is going. Thirty-one percent of the survey respondents indicated that they often use existing matter management and legal spend management solutions to review outside counsel invoices, while 28 percent often use the technology to monitor and manage outside counsel spending.

More corporate counsel are setting up long-term cost savings by frequently using the technology for early case assessments (21 percent) and tracking intellectual property assets (17 percent).

Other efforts to combat escalating legal spend include alternative fee arrangements (38 percent), provider consolidation (36 percent) and competitive bidding (21 percent).

The month-long polling process began in February and includes responses from 248 in-house counsel with legal spend ranging from one million dollars to more than $100 million. Two-thirds of the respondents are general counsel, chief legal officer or associate general counsel for their companies and 61 percent work in law departments with 10 to 35 attorneys.

A full copy of the survey can be found at http://www.insidecounsel.com/pdf/IC0508_DataCert_Link.pdf.

About InsideCounsel

Launched in 1991, InsideCounsel is the pioneering monthly magazine exclusively serving general counsel and other top in-house legal professionals. Formerly known as Corporate Legal Times, InsideCounsel was the first monthly magazine published specifically for in-house counsel. It has a monthly circulation of 40,000 including 22,384 chief legal officers, VPs and general counsel.

About DataCert, Inc.

DataCert, Inc. is the largest and fastest-growing supplier of legal and IP spend and matter management solutions. Corporate counsel rely on DataCert’s products and services to manage legal activities and provide transparency into outside legal spend. With 71 Fortune^® 500 clients and customer connections in 115 countries, DataCert processes in excess of $9 billion of electronic invoicing data on an annualized basis. Visit DataCert at www.datacert.com for more information.