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Is the volume of legal work carried out by your department and external counsel combined likely to grow? Yes 60.1% No 12.6% Stay the same 27.4% 5.6% Yes, written 6.1% Yes, over the phone 7.9% Has your top law firm asked your law department to complete a written, over the phone, or in-person satisfaction survey in the last 12 months? Yes, in-person 80.4% No Yes 59% No 41% How many firms received the top 80 per cent of your Canadian legal department's legal spend? Are you likely to implement new arrangements to get more value from the firms you deal with? 46.8% Three to five 45.4% Six to 10 5.9% 11 to 15 0.5% more than 15 1.5% the project done effectively. "My guess is 10 years from now we'll still be discussing the fact a certain percentage of projects are still being run on the billable hour," he says. "There's two sides to this: there's very little proof that flatrate billing on projects is actually to the benefit of the client. Presumably the law firm doesn't necessarily want to hand over a lower revenue base as a result of changing to a different billing method, and the same would go for other alternative arrangements," he says. In terms of work growth, 60.1 per cent of participants said the volume of legal work carried out by their department and external counsel combined is likely to grow in 2014 compared to 2013. The increase (59.7 per cent, up from 54.9 per cent last year) is largely attributed to the company being in growth mode, followed by a one-time project (37.6 per cent), or the company making an acquisition (17.1 per cent, also up from 2012). But survey respondents said they are more likely to hire additional staff (39 per cent) than send work out (14.9 per cent), even though it would take at least six months of solid improvement in the economy before they would take those steps to address the additional work. For the most part, the size of in-house counsel departments appears to be staying flat with 49.5 per cent saying there was no change in their legal team over last year, and if the department did grow, 30.6 per cent said it was because there was more work to be done. Similar to last year, 11.4 per cent said their departments decreased in size and 8.4 per cent said growth meant any positions left vacant were filled. "With increasing pressure around cost containment in most companies, most in-house departments, along with their counterparts in finance, human resources, operations, etc., are being asked to tightly manage their budget," says Devonish. "For in-house counsel, this means bringing more work in-house where possible, but also managing external counsel spend when there is a need to retain external counsel." Diversity One or two The majority of in-house counsel who answered the survey still aren't asking the law firms they deal with to provide a diverse roster of lawyers to work with, whether it be women or minorities — 74.3 per cent indicated they don't ask (up from 70.9 per cent last year) — they just want "the best person for www.CANADIAN L a w ye r m a g . c o m November/December 2013 41