Legal Village

A holistic approach

Posted 29/05/2007 by Deepak Malhotra

In previous blogs, I have written about the need to develop the debate between in-house counsel and private practice on fees and billing practices. Don’t get me wrong, the debate is already taking place – but at a different level, between individual in-house counsel and individual law firms.

There has also been a lot of recent commentary – some of it extremely valuable – derived from some fact-based research. But it’s time for a holistic debate.

The London arm of the C&I Group launched its online questionnaire to in-house members on law firm billing today (29 May). It has been launched by email and is also accessible on the C&I website, www.cigroup.org.uk. Numbering 13 questions and managed by an independent research company, the programme is run by C&I with the support of accountancy firm BDO Stoy Hayward.

The survey will close on 12 June or thereabouts, so now is the time to make your views heard.

After the survey closes, the plan is to gather and analyse the data before the C&I London focus group on fees comes together to establish its thinking around the patterns of responses. We have lined up four breakfast briefings with private practice over the summer to share the data and thinking and to get feedback from private practice. After this, the focus group hopes to prepare some best practice guidelines from autumn onwards.

So, the process has started – may I urge you to please complete the online survey (it takes only 10 minutes) as this is too important not to get involved. It does not stop there – feel free to get in touch, share any thoughts generally and join the fees focus group by emailing christine@cigroup.org.uk.