Unless you are finishing up a two-year corporate counsel stint at a remote company in rural Antarctica, you are probably pretty well-versed in the language of the recession that has taken hold of news headlines, board-room meetings, and dinner-table conversations. Scaling back, laying off, flat-fee billing, in-house eDiscovery —these have been the recent buzz words in legal departments across nation.
Well, now there are a few numbers to back up the in-house recessionary fodder. Hildebrandt International has released its annual Hildebrandt Law Department Survey, which provides benchmarking data for U.S. and global law departments.
Here are a few highlights from Hildebrandt’s findings:
- Nearly a third of the companies expect a decrease in the number of law firms
- they will use in the U.S. Only 8% plan to increase the number of firms
- engaged.The average increase in base salary for the in-house attorney was 3%, down
- from 5% reported in the 2008 Survey.Over half (56%) of the participants indicated that they are engaged in
- convergence activities.For the first time in many years of tracking the issue, the Survey shows an
- increasing number of law departments adopting or expressing interest in
- alternative billing arrangements.42% of companies predict an increase in demand for Bankruptcy
- services.
The survey involved 231 companies from 21 industries including 22% of Fortune 500 companies. No word if any of the companies surveyed are located in rural Antarctica.
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