What are these pressures doing to corporate law department budgets?
Clark: With companies struggling to stabilize their stock prices, their law departments are expected to be good corporate citizens and absorb their fair share of cost-cutting initiatives, including downsizing. Naturally, this creates a situation in which law departments have less money and fewer people to deliver what they need to deliver, which is a high level of service. There is no doubt that in-house lawyers are using creative ways to try to pare the budget, but their shrinking dollars can only go so far. Even faced with increasing regulation and the high stakes litigation that goes along with it, most law departments are experiencing no increase in budget or, in many cases, are dealing with decreases. Editor: In my experience, there was always demand for a “body count,” but I was usually able to persuade the CEO to reverse that decision by pointing out that the potential losses would be greater then the savings. Clark: Many general counsel don’t have the option of deciding whether
