What is the survey about?
- Certum Group, which provides bespoke risk transfer solutions for companies facing the uncertainty of litigation, has released the results from its second annual survey to understand how companies and in-house departments assess and manage litigation risk.
Who participated in the survey?
- Almost 100 respondents hailed from corporate legal department across 23 states and 35 different industry sectors.
- Moreover, we had a great mix of lawyers that came from small, midsized, and large companies so we were able to elicit a diverse range of viewpoints and provide a benchmark for how in-house counsel are assessing and managing litigation risk in the current market.
- Specifically, 27 % were from public companies, 58 % from private for profit companies and the rest from non profits.
What did the survey tell us about legal department staffing?
- In terms of resources – in house departments – even at larger companies are operating with small staffs and tight budgets. General counsel and their staffs are being stretched thin by increasing workloads.
- Almost 75 % said their legal departments had fewer than 10 employees. That may be adequate for the smallest companies, however, 40 % of our respondents work for companies with over 1,000 employees.
If staffing pressures are up are budget pressures at least down?
- Unfortunately, the answer is NO. In house department are currently facing both staffing and budget pressures.
- Almost 50% of respondents said their budgets are less than $1MM and only 10% said they more than $20MM.
- Moreover, over 40% reported budget cuts over the past year which came at the same time having increased workloads.
Can we expect to find form survey results in future video blogs?
- Yes, please look for more video blogs where we discuss other findings from the survey. Future episodes will cover topics such as: selecting outside counsel, the use of AFAs, leveraging litigation risk transfer products such as litigation insurance and funding, and pursuing affirmative litigation in order to turn in house departments from cost to profit center.