Legal Commentary

A Call for Benchmarks

By Patrick J. Lamb

We live in a world that is increasingly data driven. And that includes the world of law. Some may want to debate whether that is good or bad, but that it is so is beyond debate, at least in my view. With that in mind, I ask this question: when making a decision to buy services, that is engage a new lawyer, what data or benchmarks do customers want to examine?

As litigators, we focus on:

Win-Loss record
Cycle Time
Ratio of partner time to associate time
Ratio of costs to total fee
Cost per type of matter
Stage of resolution (in other words, do our matters settle early, just before trial, etc.)
Percentage of cases mediated
Percentage of cases successfully mediated
Performance to budget

What others should be added to this list?

Full post as published by In Search of Perfect Client Service on January 12, 2010 (boomark / email).