ALMResearchBlog

Poll: U.K. Lawyers Over-Confident on Client Service

Lawyers—barristers, that is—in the U.K. rate the quality of service they provide far higher than those who receive it, according to a new poll commissioned by the Bar Standards Board (BSB), according to a recent report in Legal Week . According to the findings of the MORI poll, which surveyed solicitors, prisoners and members of the public as well as barristers between December 2006 and August 2007, 89% of barristers said they were satisfied they spent enough time with their clients. However, just two-thirds (66%) of solicitors agreed – a proportion that dropped to 57% among members of the general public. By contrast, 96% of participants in the survey said barristers are honest, act with integrity and provide ‘good’ or ‘excellent’ advice and guidance. The survey, which will be conducted on a regular basis every two to three years, is in line with a BSB pledge to make evidence-based regulation a cornerstone of its regime.

Diversity News and Information

Which firms have made the best efforts to foster diversity? Take a look at the annual Diversity Scorecard, published each spring by ALM Media’s magazine, The Minority Law Journal. The searchable spreadsheet includes numbers of U.S. partners and associates who are minorities, as well as the percentage of women attorneys at NLJ 250 and Am Law 200 firms. It is available through ALM Research Online in the Lists & Rankings section. Subscribers to ALM Research Online have access to all years’ data (1984, 1985, 1990, 1992, 1996, 1998, and 2001-2006).

We mention this because there have been a surge of reports about diversity in law firms and legal departments lately. The National Law Journal’s October 11th Law Firms Newsletter was completely devoted to the issue of diversity, with articles on Why Patches Won’t Work, Diverse Attorneys Need Reasons to Stay, The Challenge of Diversity Begins with Law School and several other topics.

Our newspaper in Atlanta, Fulton County Daily Report, reported that Fortune 500 Companies are Seeing More Minority GCs, with a report based on the latest survey from the Minority Corporate Counsel Association . Progress has been mixed for minorities, according to the report. The number of African Americans in Fortune 500 GC jobs continues to grow slowly, with 22 now holding such posts -- one fewer than last year. But the total of all minority GCs is up from 32 last year, and the number of Asian-American GCs has doubled, from 6 to 12. Unfortunately, a huge disparity in gender continues among Fortune 500 general counsel of color

The ABA Journal Newsletter that Cleary Gottlieb had topped the Diversity Rankings compiled by Law Students Building a Better Profession, using data published by NALP (National Association for Legal Placement). The study found that about a third of New York firms had no Hispanic, African-American, or Asian-American partners. Female partners were even less well-represented.

But many firms have made a concerted effort to promote diversity within the ranks. Bryan Cave recently named its first diversity officer (Tina Harris), according the a recent Hildebrandt Headlines posting, and Perkins Coie hired a new director of diversity and professional development—Theresa Cropper, who had previously been the national diversity director at DLA Piper.

In-House Law Departments: Salaries, Spending

According to Altman Weil’s  2007 Law Department Compensation Benchmarking Survey, total compensation for in-house lawyers in management jumped 8% to 14% this year, and 4.5% to 23% for non-management lawyers. A report of the survey appeared in the National Law Journal. For chief legal officers, salaries rose 5.8% to a median $300,000 in 2007, while bonus dollars spiked 43% to $157,400. Division general counsel collected a 10.2% salary increase for a median of $232,000, plus a median $104,600 bonus. The survey includes data from 343 law departments with 8,148 lawyers and 72 one-lawyer departments.

Another recent NLJ article (In-house costs outpace outside counsel spending) reported on Hildebrandt International’s 2007 Law Department Survey and said that corporate legal spending increased 6% over the past year, with increases in internal spending (8%) outpacing external expenditures (3%). Total cash compensation for in-house attorneys, including salaries and bonus, climbed 10% last year, compared with 7.5% during the previous year, according to Hildebrandt’s study, which included 202 companies employing an average of 4.2 lawyers. They also surveyed companies' U.S. and international operations, and found that the median company has global revenue of $10 billion, spends nearly $30 million on legal matters and staff and has a U.S. law department with almost 30 layers and 60 staffers. The median company also shells out 58% of its U.S. legal spending on outside counsel and 40% on inside legal costs. Chief Legal Officer's total cash compensation rose $50,000 to nearly $900,000, with the median total at $800,000. General counsel's average cash compensation spiked 19% to $700,000.

2007 Corporate Board Investor Survey

The 2007 Corporate Board Investor Survey, conducted by Pepperdine University’s Graziadio School of Business and Management, set out to study investor attitudes toward CEOs and their corporate boards and found that almost nine out of ten investors say that jail time should be mandatory for corporate officers and board members convicted of practices harmful to employees, shareholders and the public. Four out of five investors surveyed favor actions by prosecutors to aggressively recover company losses from convicted executives and/or board members’ personal assets. The majority of respondents (57%) believed the requirements imposed by the law, holding CEOs and senior management personally accountable for the accuracy of their companies’ financial disclosures, are about right, while one-third (32%) said its restrictions did not go far enough. Only 8% say the law went too far.

Executive Compensation Responsible for Increase in Compliance Cost?

Foley & Lardner recently released the results of its fifth annual survey of Sarbanes-Oxley costs. Among the findings, as described in a web-only report from National Law Journal, was that corporations’ Sarbanes-Oxley Act compliance spending costs with outside advisers climbed in 2006, while internal compliance costs dropped. Foley & Lardner attributes last year's uptick to executive compensation disclosure rule changes, higher audit fees, and board compensation. To download the report from Foley & Lardner’s web site, click here

Wall St. Journal Free Company Research

The WSJ has a new feature, earnings cheat sheets for Q2 2007 that's bookmark-worthy, along with its Markets Data Center, which provides information on U.S. and international stocks, exchange-traded funds, mutual funds, bonds, rates and credit markets, and much more.

Best Legal Department: General Electric

Last month (May) Corporate Counsel magazine unveiled its annual winner of its Best Legal Department review. The winner was General Electric, and the three finalists were Accenture, Allstate, and J.C. Penney. Some of the most interesting reading in the article describing what led the editors to select GE this year was reporter Jill Nawrocki's description of how General Counsel Brackett Denniston and his team reviewed and whittled down their roster of outside counsel. If you haven't read it yet, click here.

It's interesting also interesting to note that in the 2007 Corporate Representation data (aka/ "Who Counsels Who") in the ALM Research Online database, so far only three firms have shown up as having represented General Electric in a significant transaction: King & Spalding, Hunton & Williams, and Sidley Austin Brown & Wood - all mentioned in the April 2007 issue. The Corporate Representation data is updated monthly, and is based mainly on the Big Deals and Big Suits columns in The American Lawyer and Corporate Counsel. 

Thomson and Reuters Confirm Their Deal

As reported by Information Today, the rumors of a merger between two of the three major providers of financial data, news, and trading systems have become reality. The consolidation will position the new Thomson-Reuters just ahead of arch-rival Bloomberg. Although Reuters is best known as the world’s largest international multimedia news agency, more than 90 percent of its revenues derive from its financial services business. The company’s core strengths lie in providing the content, analytics, trading, and collaboration tools needed by financial professionals—estimated to be some 370,000 around the world. The Thomson Corp, formally based in Toronto but with operational headquarters in Stamford, Conn., provides electronic workflow solutions to business and professional customers, and value-added information, software tools, and applications to professionals in the fields of law, tax and accounting, financial services, scientific research, and healthcare.

New Thomson-Reuter Leader Has His Own Blog

Reports so far have indicated that Thomson president and CEO, Richard J. Harrington, 60, who led the transformation of the company from traditional publishing to electronic solutions, software, and services will retire. And Reuters’ CEO, Tom Glocer, 47, would become CEO of the combined company at that time. It will be a new kind of leadership – Glocer has his own blog, called appropriately enough, Tom Glocer’s Blog. In his latest post (May 17), he apologizes for his silence on the merger, but now that the details have been finalized, he says “ … I can already say how proud and honored I am to have been asked to lead this new company - the media company for the 21st century.”

CEO Compensation: Forbes Report and Other Sources

Forbes magazine has issued its annual report on CEO compensation, noting that “The chief executives of America’s 500 biggest companies got a collective 38% pay raise last year … an average of $15.2 million apiece.”

We’ve posted several other blog items recently about sources for CEO compensation analyses and searchable databases, including a chart from the Wall Street Journal and the searchable database AFL-CIO’s Executive Pay Watch . And by the way, you can access our blog by clicking on this link: ALM Research Blog

ALM Research also offers data having to do with CEO compensation, the GC Compensation Survey, available as a searchable spreadsheet and (for subscribers) a searchable online database (years available include 1993-2006). The GC compensation data, like CEO compensation data in other reports, is based on the 10k (proxy) filings of public companies. Data available for each year is for the 100 best-paid GCs at the Fortune 500. The most current data available right now is for fiscal year 200. The new GC Compensation Survey will be available August 1st. To place an order now, email almresearch@alm.com.

Practice Areas and Industries Resources

Antitrust, IP: FTC and DOJ Joint Report: Promoting Innovation and Competition

Banking: Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas 2006 Annual Report

Banking, China: Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Report on China’s Banking Sector

Banking, Government: Federal Reserve Beige Book 2007

Bankruptcy, Courts: U.S. Federal Bankruptcy Courts Report on 2006 Filings

Business: National Small Business Association 2007 Small Business Survey

Class Action, Insurance: RAND Corporation Monograph on Insurance Class Actions in the U.S.

Courts, Canada: Supreme Court of Canada Ten Year Statistical View

Courts, U.S.: U.S. Supreme Court Justices Database, funded by the National Science Foundation, hosted by Northwestern University School of Law 

Energy: Energy Information Administration Annual Energy Outlook Retrospective Review: Evalution of Projections in Past Editions (1982 – 2006)

Energy: Energy Information Administration Natural Gas Year-in-Review 2006

Energy: EIA Country Analysis Brief, Russia

Equities, IPOs: Hoover’s IPO Scorecard, Q1 2007

Exports: Office of the U.S. Trade Representative 2007 National Trade Estimate Report

International: Country Analysis Briefs for France, Nigeria, Oman, Sudan

Litigation: U.S. Chamber Institute for Legal Reform Best, Worst Lawsuit Climates in the U.S.

Labor & Employment, Occupational Injury: Mobidity and Morality Report on Fatal Occupational Injuries in the U.S., 2005

Maritime, Shipping: Bureau of Transportation Statistics – America’s Container Ports

Natural Resources: World Bank’s State of the Carbon Market 2007

Patents: Thomson Scientific Report on Global Patent Activity, 1997-2006

Patents & Trademarks: U.S. Office of Patent and Trademarks Strategic Plan 2007 – 2012

Pharmaceuticals: Eurostats Comparative Price Levels in 33 European Countries, 2005

Sports: Forbes’ The Business of Baseball

Technology: U.S. Census Bureau Report on Information and Communication Technology 2005

Trusts & Estates: U.S. Trust Survey of Affluent Americans XXVI (2007)

Venture Capital: PricewaterhouseCoopers and National Venture Capital Association Rolling 12 Month Valuation Statistics, 1997-2006

White Collar Crime: Financial Crimes Enforcement Network’s Annual Report for FY 2006

Canada: Business Researcher Newsletter

Bob Berkman of the Intelligent Agent Blog reported recently on the Business Researcher Newsletter, which is new to a lot of us but is actually celebrating its 10th anniversary. The really nice thing about this source-filled free online publication, Berkman says, is that it focuses specifically on Canada and Canadian sources--a country regularly neglected by too many other North American information publications and analysts. The issues include the lastest releases from Statistics Canada. The publication and associated links are all made available by a site called Stat Links Canada, which was launched by GD Sourcing, a site that is designed to help Canadian entrepreneurs locate good sources of market data.

WSJ Posts CEO Compensation Scorecard

Available for free, this Wall Street Journal CEO Compensation Scorecard has all the compensation info for over 90 Fortune top executives. As noted at the top of the chart: “Starting with this year's proxies, the SEC has changed how companies report pay. For companies whose fiscal year ended after Dec. 15, 2006, the SEC now mandates a table that includes salary, bonus, the accounting cost of stock and stock-option awards, incentive-plan payments, change in pension value and deferred-compensation earnings, and all other compensation -- typically perquisites. It also includes, for the first time, a ‘total compensation"’ column, which attempts to make pay across companies more comparable. NOTE: Because it follows the SEC total, this chart's ‘total’ number states what the CEO cost the company in a year, rather than what the CEO actually received.”

Business Research: Hoover’s Launches Index of Leading Companies, Non-Profits, Associations

The Resource Shelf blog recently posted this notice about Hoover ’s free new monthly index of the leading public and private companies, non-profits, and associations. 1000 companies are listed in the Hoover’s Index, which – according to Hoovers“represents the brand leaders, up-and-comers, and buzz’ creators that are driving U.S.and international commerce. Because it reveals monthly spikes in company search activity that are independent of companies' fiscal performance, the Index is a resource that business executives, pubic relations managers, financial analysts, and investment professionals can use to gauge which companies are capturing the interest of the global business community." As of today, the top 5 organizations were:

1. The Gatorade Company

2. The Blackstone Group L.P.

3. Enterprise Rent-A-Car Company

4. New Century Financial Corporation

5. Direct Group Limited

General Electric’s Winning Legal Department

For its second Best Legal Department competition, Corporate Counsel magazine asked corporate legal departments about everything from budgets to staffing to litigation strategy. Point values were assigned to key areas, such as outside counsel management, diversity and pro bono efforts. This year's winner stood out, according to CC editor Anthony Paonita. “The whole was greater than the sum of its parts. From using technology creatively, to managing its litigation proactively, to overseeing a select group of law firms, General Electric does it all.”

ALM Survey: How U.S. Companies Select International Outside Counsel

ALM Media, in association with Silvia Hodges, founder of Legal Marketing Italia, has published a report called How U.S. Companies Select International Outside Counsel, based on surveys and interviews with 219 U.S. key corporate decision-makers involved in the purchasing of overseas legal services. Findings include the fact that very few U.S.businesses maintain formal or informal lists for their overseas legal advisors; a lot of the selection takes place through personal referrals and recommendations instead of formal RFPs; international outside counsel are most frequently sought in the U.K.(59%), Canada (50%) and China (46%).  The report is available for free by clicking on the title above.

Salaries: Executive PayWatch Web Site

This handy, free, quick-search web site is brought to you by the AFL-CIO. It's called the 2007 Executive PayWatch and allows you to search by ticker symbol or company name. Your search yields information about CEO compensation at U.S. corporations, along with comparisons showing CEO vs. worker pay and CEO vs. compensation for the President. Several free reports are also offered, such as Trends in CEO pay, information about the new SEC disclosure rules, and Golden Goodbyes-information about the generous exit packages paid to departing CEOs.

2007 Fortune 500 Rankings and Report

It's that time of year. Fortune magazine has just published its annual standard of corporate America, the Fortune 500 issue. In a way, the term "Fortune 500" is an anachronism, since many of the list-especially if you want to search by state-include the top 1,000 companies in the U.S., ranked by gross revenue in 2006. Generously, Fortune allows free searching online by company name, city, industry, CEO, women CEOs, and 10 other factors.

Sam Walton's Wal-Mart tops the Fortune list. And who serves as their outside counsel? A search through the client information available through ALM Research Online turned up 20 different law firms that have been mentioned in news reports as the Fortune 1 company's counsel since we began compiling "who counsels who" information in 1998. The 2006 Corporate Representation spreadsheet shows 3 different firms serving Wal-Mart in the area of Litigation. The 2007 Corporate Representation spreadhsheet has information culled so far from published reports, and is updated monthly. 

Corporate Counsel Story on Non-Licensed GCs Leads to Firing

As mentioned in one of our recent blog posts, Corporate Counsel magazine's story on Fortune 250 GCs who are not licensed to practice in the state in which they work set off buzz across the industry. One result:  Toledo-based Dana Corporation replaced general counsel Michael DeBacker six days after the story reported that he was not properly licensed to practice law in Ohio, according to a company filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission on April 12. Corporate Counsel's follow-up article can be read here.

Compensation: General Counsel

ALM’s online venue, Law.com carried a report the other day from the Associate Press about Merck & Co. raising their GC’s salary, from $689,400 to $780,000, while noting that the New Jersey-based drug manufactuer has been the target of numerous lawsuits from consumers claiming that Merck's Vioxx painkiller caused heart attacks. It took the drug off the market in 2004. The company said in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission that Chief Executive Richard T. Clark recommended increasing Frazier's salary because of his "significant contributions to Merck, as well as his highly valuable experience and exceptional leadership abilities." Frazier has been with the company since 1999, according to Monday's filing, the report said.

Each year, ALM’s editorial research editors cull through current SEC filings to find the five highest-paid executives at the largest companies (required by law to be listed on the proxy statement each year), because very frequently the General Counsel or Chief Legal Advisor is among those five highest-paid executives. ALM Research then archives the information (published each year in Corporate Counsel magazine), making it available in a spreadsheet report, the GC Compensation Survey. The report includes the name, rank, salary, bonus, and where applicable, other forms of remuneration for each of the GCs ranked. (As always, the information is available for no extra cost to subscribers, and on a pay-per-view basis to non-subscribers.)

This year, ALM’s newspaper in Atlanta, Daily Report, built a database to archive the same types of information about compensation for GCs and CLOs in Southeastern states. The most current published list, GC Pay in the Southeast is available online for free, and covers 197 GCs/CLOs in 11 Southeastern states.

Cleary “Storms” Capital Markets Rankings

Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton “stormed” to the top of European equity capital markets rankings for the first three quarters of 2006, released November 5^th by Thomson Financials, and reported by LegalWeek.com. Cleary ranked first for advising issuers on equity capital markets, with eight deals worth $22.7 billion to their credit, ahead of Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer in second place, advising on 29 deals worth $17.24 billion.

    

The tables show Cleary also in third position for bank mandates on European equity capital markets transactions, up from 32nd place for the same period last year. Linklaters retained the top position for bank advisory roles, with Freshfields in second. In the debt capital markets tables for bank mandates, Allen & Overy maintained its lead slightly ahead of Linklaters. In third place was Clifford Chance. Sidley Austin has maintained its number one position advising companies on debt capital markets.

   

Thomson Financial capital markets rankings figure prominently in the annual Corporate Scorecard rankings published by The American Lawyer, scheduled next for the April 2007 issue. A searchable spreadsheet of the 2006 rankings is available through ALM Research Online, in the Lists & Rankings section. For subscribers to the database, information from previous years can be located by searching the “Corporate” section using the “Topics” button. The Corporate Scorecard report details the performance of law firms with the most active corporate finance and capital markets practices. Firms are ranked on both the number and value of the deals handled in numerous transactional areas, including Mergers and Acquisitions, Equities, IPOs, Debt Issues, Asset-Backed Securities, REITs, Bankruptcies, and Mutual Funds.

Survey Results: The European Mid-Tier Corporate Market

A third major study of the European legal services market has just been released by LexisNexis Martindale-Hubble and written by Silvia Hodges, this one focusing on European mid-tier corporations, and what matters most in the delivery of legal services by outside counsel. According to the report, the survey establishes that, while few of these companies have formal annual legal budgets, they require the same full range of legal services as their larger competitors, and a significant number intend to increase their external legal spending in the next year.

   

Both qualitative and quantitative methods were used in the study, with 194 companies responding to a questionnaire, and 31 companies participating in in-depth face-to-face interviews. Of importance to marketers and business development professionals were the findings that selections of new firms were made mostly through referrals, that decision-makers took a dim view of marketing “gimmicks,” and that most decisions were made based on the reputation of an individual practitioner, rather than the firm’s reputation. In addition, respondents emphasized that their outside counsel were expected to display an in-depth knowledge of the client’s own business and industry, to the point of matching the expertise of the in-house counsel.

   

Request for copies of the survey may be addressed to Silvia Hodges (hodges@silviahodges.com).

IP Client Survey

The results of the annual Who Protects IP America survey are in this month’s issue of IP Law & Business. Each year, Fortune 250 general counsel are surveyed and asked to name their go-to firms for IP litigation and patent work. Baker Botts topped the list this year, with 10 mentions by responding GCs. Right behind the Houston-based firm were Howrey (8 mentions), Jones Day (7 mentions), and Woodcock Washburn (7 mentions).

    

Information from this survey, which also surveys GCs about their most-used outside counsel for corporate, general litigation, and employment work (published in Corporate Counsel magazine and National Law Journal), is integrated into the ALM Research Online database, where it is available via several searches. Searching by topic, subscribers may choose “Clients” to find information going back to 1998 linking specific firms to specific companies in specific practice areas, accumulated not only from the “Who Counsels Who” surveys, but also from the “Big Deals” and “Big Suits” columns regularly published in ALM’s many magazines and newspapers, and from press releases. A searchable spreadsheet, 2006 Corporate Representation, available in the Lists & Rankings section, includes the same information for the last two years and is updated monthly.

Practice Areas & Industries 10.18.06

• Agriculture, Aquiculture: U.S. Dept. of Agriculture’s 2005 Census of Aquiculture
• Agriculture & Farming: U.S. Dept of Agriculture 2005 U.S. Animal Health Report
• Banking: FDIC’s State Profiles of Banking and Economic Conditions
• Bankruptcy: Nat’l Association of Consumer Bankruptcy Attorneys Law Anniversary Survey
• Business: Tax Foundation’s 2007 State of Business Tax Climate Index
• Energy, Coal: Energy Information Administration’s Historical Overview of Coal Production
• Energy, Electric: Energy Information Administration Electric Power Annual
• Energy, Geothermal: Geothermal Energy Association Handbook on Externalities, Employment, and Economics of Geothermal Energy
• Energy, Heating Oil and Propane: Energy Information Administration Heating Oil and Propane Update
• Energy, Petroleum: Energy Information Administration’s Petroleum Supply Annual 2005, Vol 1 and Vol. 2
• Environmental Law: League of Conservation Votes National Environmental Scorecard
• Immigration: DOJ’s Immigration Prosecutions for June 2006
• Insurance, Health: Employee Benefit Research Institute’s Sources of Health Insurance and Characteristics of the Uninsured: Analysis of the March 2006 Current Population Survey
• International, Government: House of Commons Library Summary of Parliamentary Pay and Allowances
• International Securities: U.S. Dept. of the Treasury Preliminary Annual Report on U.S. Holdings of Foreign Securities
• Products Liability: AskSam’s Searchable Database of FDA Recalls and News
• Real Estate: Deloitte & Touche 2006 Real Estate Capital Markets Industry Update
• Sports Law: Social Investment Forum/Institutional Shareholder Services 2006 Postseason Report on Executive Pay and Board Accountability

Fulbright & Jaworski Annual Litigation Survey

Houston-based Fulbright & Jaworski recently released the results of its annual Litigation Survey. Some of the findings this year include: Companies with revenues of $1 billion or more each handled, on average, more than 550 legal actions in 2005. The Insurance industry is the most litigation-prone, confronting an average of nearly 1,700 lawsuits last year. Second and third places in the litigation sweepstakes go to retailers and energy firms, with companies in each sector averaging more than 330 cases, the survey said. Not all of the lawsuits are incoming – 70% of U.S. companies responding to the survey said they had brought actions in the past year.

   

For information about which are the “go-to” litigation firms for many companies and organizations, the ALM Research Online database accumulates that information from surveys conducted by ALM’s magazines and newspapers in their Client Representation data. Researchers may use the menu bars look for specific firms or clients. The 2006 Corporate Representation (Who Counsels Who) is available in searchable spreadsheet format.

Many Small Firms Represent the Largest U.S. Companies

An article in the current issue of ALM’s Small Firm Business magazine notes that 25% of the “go-to” firms menioned in this year’s Who Represents Corporate America survey are firms with 40 or fewer attorneys. Sister publication Corporate Counsel magazine published the survey results in their September issue. Fortune 250 general counsel were asked to name their “go to” firms in the areas of litigation, corporate transactions, labor and employment, and intellectual property; 93 responded.

   

The complete results of that survey, along with other accumulated information about Who Counsels Who are available in the ALM Research Online database in the Lists & Rankings section. The searchable spreadsheet is called 2006 Corporate Representation (Who Counsels Who); it is available free to subscribers, and for $900 to non-subscribers. Subscribers may also search for specific clients and their firms, as named in the Who Counsels Who surveys, as well as in other published reports, such as “Big Deals” and “Big Suits” by using the custom search menu for searching.

The 2006 Plaintiffs' Hot List

National Law Journal has just published its annual Plantiffs Hot List, eleven firms that stood out on the litigation scene over the past 12 months. NLJ asked readers to nominate plaintiffs' firms with at least one significant win within the period, plus an impressive record of victories over the preceding five years. That meant prevailing in a bench or jury trial worth lots of money or testing a legal theory with the potential to shape future litigation. They looked for firms that devoted at least 50% of their resources to plaintiffs' work.

 

Noting that it was a year of “malaise, one in which “it's telling when the Association of Trial Lawyers of America feels compelled to change its name to a presumably more felicitous American Association for Justice,” NLJ listed the most noteworthy cases for the 11 “hot” plaintiff’s firms, which included: Baron & Budd; Bernstein, Liebhard & Lifshitz; Bernstein, Litowitz Berger & Grossman; Cohen, Milstein Hausfeld & Toll; Hagens Berman; Girardi & Keese; Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom; Labaton, Sucharow & Rudoff; Lerach Coughline Stoia Geller Rudman & Robbins; Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein; and Motley Rice.

   

Firms that appear on this list, as well as those which appear on NLJ’s Who Represents Corporate America, and all of ALM’s publications’ lists and columns which highlight firms identified as the “go-to” firms by their clients, and firms and their clients in significant deals and suits, are compiled on a continuous basis and archived in the ALM Research Online database. Information is then available to subscribers, and in pay-for searchable spreadsheet form to non-subscribers.

Fortune 500 Blog Tracking

Do your firm’s Fortune 500 clients publish blogs? If you’re not sure, here is a quick way to drill down to the information – the SocialText Fortune 500 Business Blogging Wiki. A click on the name of the company will take you right to their blogs.

Practice Area & Industries

Business: U.S. Small Business Administration’s 2006 State Economic Profiles

Criminal Law: FBI’s 2005 Report on Crime in the U.S.

Criminal Law: