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Supreme Court Defers to State Law on Ownership of Tax Refund
Federal courts should "turn to state law to resolve" a "fight over a tax refund," held a unanimous U.S. Supreme Court in Rodriquez v. FDIC (In re United W Bancorp., Inc.).
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The State of Legal Finance in 2020
Legal industry analyst Ari Kaplan interviewed 32 lawyers from Finland, France, Hong Kong, Norway, Singapore, the UK and the U.S. about the evolution of legal finance. He also surveyed 20 in-house lawyers at Fortune 500 companies and 18 law firm lawyers from Australia, the Cayman Islands, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Italy, Singapore, Sweden, the UK, and the U.S. about emerging trends in legal finance. Below are some of his findings and what they indicate about the current state of the sector.
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Recovery Models for e-Discovery and Litigation Support Services that Make an Impact
In 2019, Mattern went to the market to conduct its first deep dive into e-discovery and litigation support cost recovery in the 2020 e-Discovery and Litigation Support Cost Recovery Survey. Some of the results surprised us.
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Law Firm Mergers and Predictions for the Year 2020
2019 went down as another record year for law firm mergers. But what do the numbers teach us? Did the tendency to merge apply to law firms across the board? Is the merger mania likely to continue in 2020? What was the impetus for record number of mergers? This article breaks down the available data to answer these questions and attempts to give us a glimpse into the future.
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Client Maximization: Doing Well by Doing the Right Things
Making the most of your firm's client base need not be a costly undertaking. There are several steps a firm of any size can undertake to improve client experiences, ultimately, while also increasing the firm's chances of thriving.
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Outsourcing: How to Do Better Than Flipping a Coin
The legal industry is on the cusp of transformational change making the "siren song" of a successful outsourcing engagement ever more alluring: increase expertise and flexibility while lowering costs, and significantly mitigating risk.
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How Law Firms Are Overcoming New Business Development Challenges
With the intense competition for new legal work, demands on lawyers' available time and the increasing discounts clients demand, it's getting harder for law firms operating under a billable-hour business model to support the consistent development of new legal work by investing in and maintaining a marketing department alone.
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Linking Partner Pay to Strategic Firm Objectives
Pay for performance is not a new concept in this country. The ideas and concepts underlying a graduated pay scale based on contribution and merit are deeply ingrained in our society. However, in general law firms have been slower to adopt pay for performance systems. What law firms need now, and this article describes, is an approach to partner compensation that closely links a partners pay to their ability to contribute to the achievement of the firm's strategic objectives.
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Sales Speak: Strategies to Avoid or Reduce Billing Rate Discounts
Requests for discounts have become a routine step in the legal services purchasing process. Lawyers face the uncomfortable task of defending their billing rates in both RFPs and client pitches. But too often, lawyers don't make an effort to resist giving a discount when asked. Mostly because they haven't been trained in how to do it.
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Driving Law Firm Profits Through Data Analytics
"Data Analytics" have become more than just buzzwords and are an integral part of well informed decision making. The following best practices have the ability to bring your firm's data management up to speed with competitors in the law industry, while turning what might be an underutilized resource into a working asset that drives revenue.
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