The initial shock of the pandemic caused plenty of law firms and corporate law departments to make tough decisions about their budgets. Some resorted to furloughs and pay cuts as a way of stemming costs. Others examined strategies like reducing real-estate expenses or hiring temporary attorneys to make every dollar count. Eventually, conditions stabilized, but… Read More »
When the world shifted from commercial work spaces to home offices, most in the legal industry didn’t expect changes to last more than several months. Yet here we are today, with 76% of U.S. attorneys working from home at least one day per week, and what most imagined to be a brief detour turning into… Read More »
“When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.” Powerful in their time, Viktor Frankl’s words take on a renewed significance in the COVID-19 era. Rather than wallowing in the challenges of a trying year, business leaders embraced the opportunities the pandemic provided and evolved with new trends.… Read More »
The year 2020 has been called “the most interesting budgeting season in years” by Law.com, and we at Assigned Counsel® would have to agree with them. Budgetary priorities have been jumbled and reshuffled in ways few would have expected at the beginning of the year, when COVID-19 and social distancing weren’t part of our collective… Read More »
Discounted law firm rates could go a long way to reducing pressure on corporate law department budgets, but Altman Weil’s 2019 Chief Legal Officer Survey finds that asking for rate reductions is a sticky subject. In fact, 33% of CLOs say they avoid this line of questioning to avoid prejudicing their outside law firm relationship… Read More »
At the heart of every effective corporate law department is a commitment to collaboration. The shared expectation that in-house attorneys “do more with less” can unite the team, encouraging internal staff to share their knowledge and lend a hand when their bandwidth permits. Yet even with total in-house cooperation, there will still be situations where… Read More »
The American Bar Association (ABA) finds that within the entire legal profession only 15% of attorneys identify as racial or ethnic minorities and only 36% identify as women. The lack of existing diversity in the field makes it even harder for corporate law departments to cultivate varied backgrounds and perspectives within their organization. Consulting firm… Read More »
The Challenge Our client, a leading technology manufacturer located in the Southwest, needed an attorney with in-depth experience in specific federal acquisition regulations relating to their defense and aerospace customers. The nature of the undertaking required someone with extensive experience capable of working in a fast-paced environment. From Assigned Counsel’s previous interactions with this client,… Read More »
How essential is physical office space? COVID-19 put that long simmering question to the test. From a productivity standpoint, the 62% of jobs that plunged into an unplanned, full-time work-from-home experiment only witnessed a 1% drop in productivity. When you consider that 40% of professionals prefer full-time remote work and most executives are looking for… Read More »
COVID-19 has accelerated the typical boom-bust cycle, imposing austerity on corporate law department budgets and compelling in-house counsel to do far more with far less. It’s familiar territory for those who lived and worked through the Recession (or if you’re showing your age, the Dot Com Bubble of the early 2000s), and budgets will rebound… Read More »