Category Archives: Reports & Surveys

How many is a billion?

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How many is a billion? Everyone knows the answer.

Or do they? Does it actually matter?

The official answer is that what we in England used to know as a billion has been downgraded. Is this just another example of Governments massaging statistics? I suppose it matters if you are trying to make something look bigger than it actually is. If I am a billionaire, I want to be worth a million million. But I am not, so do I care that I am these days only worth a thousand million?

Likewise with a trillion which has undergone an even more extensive cut. What used to be a million, million, million million is now only a million, million.

We are obsessed these days with the “how many?” question. How many friends have you got on Facebook? How many followers on Twitter? How many connections on LinkedIn?

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LPO survey feedback

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Thanks to all those who responded to my recent “Legal Process Outsourcing” survey – we had a respectable response rate of around 20% and some individual feedback for which we are most grateful. Here are some preliminary conclusions -

  • Of those responding, a clear majority of about 70% had not outsourced and had no experience of the process. Of the 30% who had some experience, over 80% had experienced mixed or negative aspects of the process – only one respondent said they had had an entirely positive experience.
  • Of those who were thinking of outsourcing, the results were again mixed with 46% agreeing they would consider outsourcing of large disclosure exercises but 54% saying they remained to be convinced of the benefits or who had come to the conclusion that the work should not be outsourced in any circumstances.
  • In response to the question about which aspects of their work they would consider outsourcing, 77% thought that they would consider outsourcing initial document review, the collection and processing of ESI and document review or aspects of their middle or back office functions.

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April Fowl

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It may be this continuing chill frosting up my antennae but I have been a little late and somewhat inaccurate with my April Fool detection this year..

The origin of All Fool’s Day goes back to the late 16th century and the introduction of the Gregorian calendar in France under the reign of Charles 1X.  I am not entirely convinced that all the hoaxes and pranks associated with that day can be explained by the fact that people were slow to catch on to the fact that the start of the year had been moved from the end of March to January 1st, and continued to celebrate New Year in April, resulting in the rest of the population calling them April Fools.

Nonetheless the practice of making jokes at the expense of others on April 1st has a wide currency even today in countries as varied as India, Scotland and Italy.

It was, therefore, understandable that I should have been fooled into thinking that recent reports that Easter eggs at Eversheds had fallen fowl (sorry!) of the firm’s equality and diversity policy were part of some seasonal spoof.

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Fulbright & Jaworski 2009 Survey

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US law firm, Fulbright & Jaworski, has offices all around the world in places as disparate as Dubai, Munich, Riyadh, Hong Kong, London and Beijing. 

This is the 6th year that the firm has polled corporate law departments on the state of global litigation and the results confirm not only that there is an upswing in instructions but also that increasing litigation activity is anticipated in the year to come.

I have commented previously on where I have seen the litigation coming from and it is gratifying to see the survey confirm the trends: 

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