Legal Marketing & PR

Corporate Lawyers And Legal Fees - Can NZ Lawyers Lead The Way?

By lawjobspipeline

We reported at LawFuel recently on the just-released Australia and New Zealand reoprt, The ACLA/CLANZ Legal Department Benchmarking Report 2008 which looked at a stack of metrics relating to inhouse counsel.  A number of interesting trends and information emerged, but let’s focus on one small, four-letter word:  fees. 

Given that the 125 Government and corporates surveyed spend over $1 billion on legal fees annually they have something to say about the word, surely.
Apart from the dollar charges, corporate lawyers are also concerned about the way costs are communicated, along with reporting of the all-too-frequent overruns.

The report shows that when asked for fee estimates, law firms were consistently on or below budget just 2 per cent of the time. Only a third of the corporates surveyed reported that firms met their budget more than half the time.

Ron Pol, from legal consultancy Team Factors and one of the authors of the Benchmarking reports says there is an opportunity for New Zealand to take the lead in fixing this issue in a manner that could create considerable kudos for the client who brough it about.

“The issue is not confined to this country. if proactive lawyers work with the clients least satisfied with hourly billing and arrive at a workable alternative, countless other clients would clearly be keen to learn more, here and overseas.

Full post as published by Lawyer Marketing Blog on March 20, 2008 (boomark / email).