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 [email protected].