Hildebrandt Survey Shows Recessionary Effects on In-House Counsel

By Neetal Parekh on October 16, 2009 | Last updated on March 21, 2019

Unless you are finishing up a two-year corporate counsel stint at a remote company in rural Antarctica, you are probably pretty well-versed in the language of the recession that has taken hold of news headlines, board-room meetings, and dinner-table conversations. Scaling back, laying off, flat-fee billing, in-house eDiscovery ---these have been the recent buzz words in legal departments across nation.

Well, now there are a few numbers to back up the in-house recessionary fodder. Hildebrandt International has released its annual Hildebrandt Law Department Survey, which provides benchmarking data for U.S. and global law departments.

Here are a few highlights from Hildebrandt's findings:

Nearly a third of the companies expect a decrease in the number of law firms they will use in the U.S. Only 8% plan to increase the number of firms engaged.
The average increase in base salary for the in-house attorney was 3%, down from 5% reported in the 2008 Survey.
Over half (56%) of the participants indicated that they are engaged in convergence activities.
For the first time in many years of tracking the issue, the Survey shows an increasing number of law departments adopting or expressing interest in alternative billing arrangements.
42% of companies predict an increase in demand for Bankruptcy services.

The survey involved 231 companies from 21 industries including 22% of Fortune 500 companies. No word if any of the companies surveyed are located in rural Antarctica.