ALMResearchBlog

2010 Midlevel and Summer Associate Surveys

The 2010 Midlevel and Summer Associate Surveys are currently out and available for download at all subscription levels.  In addition, ALM Legal Intelligence is making individual question scores available for participating firms.  This additional report includes data per associate for all offices of the firm that have received a minimum of five responses.  

Participating Law Firms that are Premium Plus subscribers have access to this additional report with their subscription access. 

Click here to purchase.

If you have a question or would like to set up a demo to view our subscription options, please contact Phil Flora at 212-457-7767 or via email at pflora@alm.com.

3 New Surveys

ALM Legal Intelligence has released three new surveys that subscribers of all subscription levels can access and download today.  A brief description of each and how you can download them is below.

 

Law Firm Hiring Survey – ALM Legal Intelligence has conducted a survey among law department heads about the most salient factors in choosing an outside law firm.  We invited participation from those who have significant input into the law firm hiring process.  Examples of respondent job titles include General Counsel, Associate General Counsel, Staff Attorney, Vice President of Legal, Practice Area Head and Deputy General Counsel.  All respondents have at least some involvement in the decision-making process of hiring law firms, including determining the need, recommending or evaluating law firms, and authorizing expenditures.

 

Click here to download the Law Firm Hiring Survey.

 

Midsize Hot List – The National Law Journal’s Midsize Hot List includes 20 law firms that have thrived amid the downturn.  From among the stacks of nominations we received, we selected firms that experienced a string of successes and that showed innovative ways to run their operations despite the economy.

 

Click here to download the Midsize Hot List.

 

Summer Associate Hiring Survey – The Summer Associate Hiring Survey looks at the headcount of summer associates at AmLaw 200 firms.  The report includes counts for current and previous year, with a year-to-year percentage change.  Firm names are arranged starting with the highest percentage drop year-over-year in the number of summer associates hired for the current year to the highest percentage growth.  Surveys are distributed through the firms’ recruiting coordinators whom we contact in the spring about participation.  Eligible summer associates are first- and second-year law students clerking at firms for at least three weeks during the summer. 

 

Click here to download the Summer Associate Hiring Survey.

 

If you have a question finding what you need or would like to set up a demo to view our subscription options, please contact Phil Flora at 212-457-7767 or via email at pflora@alm.com.

GC Compensation Survey

The 2010 GC Compensation Survey is now available for download.  Corporate Counsel Magazine’s annual salary survey of the 100 highest paid General Counsels at major corporations.  The survey, which appears in the either the August edition of the magazine, includes name, rank, salary, bonus, and where applicable, other forms of remuneration for each of the GCs ranked. 

 The 2010 GC Compensation Survey is available for all subscribers.  Premium and Premium Plus subscribers have access to all previous years as well. 

 Click here to purchase and download the 2010 GC Compensation Survey.

LTN Technology Vendor Satisfaction Survey

We've released a new survey today at Legal Tech West Coast that Monica Bay from Law Technology News covered as a front page story on the magazine's website.

LTN Article

We've conducted a survey of legal technology-based products and services (e.g., software, web-based tools, etc.) that are developed for or commonly used in law firms. We invited participation from anyone in the firm who has significant input into the technology purchasing process. This includes managing partners, directors and administrators involved in the decision process. The purpose of the survey is to examine firms’ usage of and satisfaction with technology across 25 different product categories. This report focuses on usage and satisfaction scores by vendor per category.

Methodology:

The survey was conducted between January 29, 2010 and April 9, 2010 by means of a confidential, web-based questionnaire. A survey invitation was sent to professionals in law firms who have input into the technology purchasing process. More than 600 people responded.

New Survey Studies Social Media Use by General Counsel.

The survey of the social media habits of 164 in-house counsel was conducted by Greentarget Strategic Communications, ALM Legal Intelligence and Zeughauser Group.

The survey reveals that sophisticated purchasers of legal services in major corporations increasingly are influenced by attorney-authored blogs in forming opinions that influence law firm hiring decisions. Additionally, nearly 70 percent of respondents aged 30 to 39 expect their consumption of business and legal industry news through social media platforms to increase within the next six months.

It will be interesting to watch how the perceptions and usage patterns of the in-house legal community unfold over time.  There’s no question that law firm marketers are anxious to leverage these emerging channels at the enterprise level to advance their reputations, brands and business development goals.  As we continue to use the survey to track new media adoption among corporate purchasers, we will keep a close eye on how both firms and clients alike engage and interact more frequently through these platforms.

The full report can be downloaded here.

ALM Legal Intelligence On the Road

It's been a very busy first quarter with new surveys and products being launched, and the economy showing signs of life.

We will be exhibiting at several shows in the coming weeks and wanted to share our plans.  If you are planning on attending let us know, or stop by our booth to say hello.

Association of Legal Administrators - Boston, May 3 - 6

Special Libraries Association - New Orleans, June 12 - 16

LegalTech West Coast - Los Angeles, June 22 - 24

American Association of Law Libraries - Denver, July 10 - 14

Law Technology News Technology Satisfaction Survey

Another reminder to take our survey!

ALM Legal Intelligence and Law Technology News have recently launched a new survey to measure law firm satisfaction across several categories of technology. Tell us what you think about the products and services your firm uses and rate vendors across 25 technology categories among the following 9 attributes, including:

• Brand Reputation
• Detail of vendor literature
• Ease of installation
• Ease of integration with other technology products
• Customer Service responsiveness
• Availability of training
• Ease of integration into the firm’s workflow
• Features and functions
• Price for value

 

The breadth of data we collect will help firms with purchasing decisions and provide an objective measure of the vendors’ and their technologies’ performance as reported by your peers.

 

CLICK HERE TO TAKE THE SURVEY

 

The LTN Technology Vendor Satisfaction Survey will be open to participants from now until April 9^th. If you submit your completed questionnaire before the April 9th deadline, your name will be entered into a drawing to win a $250 American Express Gift Card! 

ALM Economic Confidence Index

We are again recruiting participants for our quarterly Economic Confidence Index. 

Please take a moment to fill out the short survey here.

Here's an excerpt from the last results:

"In the December wave of ALM Legal Intelligence’s Economic Confidence Index, favorability of the current state of the economy still hovers in the low teens. But optimism that the economy will improve as we move into 2010 continues to hold fast, as the overall ECI spikes again to 143.

In the August and October waves, significantly more firms report that business conditions have improved since the benchmark wave of June 2009 (20%). December data also reflects that more than half anticipate that conditions will continue to improve in the next 6 months." 

You can download the entire December report here.

Reducing Costs by Greening the Law Firm

I thought I would share a couple thoughts on a webinar that I attended yesterday called Greening the Law Firm.

First a note about the technology – Shift Worldwide presented the webinar on their proprietary platform.  Actually called a Virtual Panel Discussion it features the speakers live from their offices / locations on the Virtual dashboard.  From a user standpoint, I thought it was very slick.  And was much more interesting than the usual slide presentation format.

What caught my eye about this particular vPanel was the topic.  “Green” seems like it went away for awhile as companies and firms hunkered down and focused on the economy.  It’s heartening to see that this topic (along with Diversity, Pro Bono and Associate Satisfaction) is continuing to get attention.  Secondly, I feel like there’s been a perception that “going green” would actually cost more than what currently being spent in operations, so this was an interesting twist.  Good for the environment and saves money.

Aside from the usual suggestions on how to make your office more green, I thought it was interesting how the discussion was framed.  i.e. there’s two main drivers to “go green”. 

Client-driven:   One of the panelist’s firms has a large environmental law practice; they wanted to ensure they could “walk the talk” and provided some good examples of implementing green practices that clients can see – specifically cups made of corn, biodegradable spoons, filtration systems to replace bottled water in conference rooms.

Cost-driven:   A firm that removes bottled water from offices can save approximately $10K.  Also putting permanent dishware in conference rooms, encouraging double-sided printing, the use of centralized printers, consolidation of data centers, unified communications, web conferencing, ability to raise conference rooms walls to best utilize space, have lights shut off after a certain amount of time/motion sensors.  Telecommuting for attorneys was described as “the wave of the future”.  It creates a more attractive situation for attorneys—billable either way; and it was said studies show people are more productive at home. 

Law Technology News Technology Satisfaction Survey

In response to many inquires and feedback that we received from law firm purchasers of technology as well as from vendors, we have recently launched a new survey to measure law firm satisfaction across several categories of technology.
 
When we have conducted the Law Technology News Awards in the past, questions from law firm purchasers inevitably arose after the results were announced around how the winners were picked, and what more information we could provide to help the firms in their decision making process.  Because the awards were based solely on the number of votes, we didn’t have any additional information to provide.  In addition, we heard that because of the nomination process, not all vendors and technology were represented.
 
To remedy that, and to provide more value to our customers, this year’s survey will attempt to gather additional information from respondents across 9 attributes in 25 technology categories.    We have pre-populated the categories with the last 2 years winners of the LTN awards, but we also are allowing write-in evaluations of products and services that are not listed.
 
The survey will be open to participants from now until the end of April, and is not limited to subscribers of Law Technology News.  I encourage you to participate.
 
We will be releasing the executive summary of the results at LegalTech West Coast in June.  Full results of the survey (including verbatim comments and analysis) will be available for purchase through the end of the year.  

From these results, we will be choosing the winners of the annual Law Technology News Vendor Awards.   

The survey can be taken here:  www.almlegalintelligence.com/ltn

 
Feel free to call or email me if you have any questions regarding this new survey.