General counsel and legal operations
Enterprise legal benchmarking
Benchmarks for the matters a legal department carries: how long comparable matters last, what exposure they carry and how often they are brought, read from the filed record rather than from peer surveys.
Who this is for
General counsel, heads of legal operations and litigation managers
Your job is to budget litigation you did not choose, report it to a finance committee, and judge whether outside counsel’s plan is reasonable. Peer surveys tell you what other departments say they spend. They do not tell you how long a matter like yours lasts in the court where it sits.
- 69%
- 65.8%
- 62.7%
- 62.3%
- 57%
- 54.7%
- 50.3%
- 49.7%
- 46.2%
- 45.7%
What is benchmarked
Three quantities are measured by matter type and venue. Duration is the time from filing to disposition and to trial. Exposure is the range in which comparable matters resolved. Propensity is how often a given type of claim is brought against organisations like yours, in the courts where you operate.
Each benchmark is a band with the number of comparable matters beside it, so a department can see both the position and the weight of evidence behind it.
Litigation propensity as a measured quantity
Litigation propensity is measured from filed matters for a defined group and claim type over a stated period, not estimated from sentiment. It states how many matters were filed in the period and how that compares with the prior period. A rising count in one claim type, in one court, is an early signal for a budget line.
How a department uses the benchmarks
Budgeting starts from the duration band for the matter type and the court, so the plan covers the slow end as well as the middle. Reporting compares the open docket to the benchmark and flags the matters running outside it. Reviewing outside counsel’s plan becomes a comparison of the plan’s timeline with the band for comparable matters.
How to read this
The figure is a court-level reference point from published U.S. Courts statistics. Matter-level benchmarks add the matter type and are stated as bands. They inform a budget and a plan and are not a forecast of any one matter.
Read next
Questions readers ask
What does enterprise legal benchmarking measure?
Duration from filing to disposition and to trial, the range in which comparable matters resolved, and how often a claim type is brought in the courts where an organisation operates, all by matter type and venue and stated as bands.
How is litigation propensity measured?
Litigation propensity is measured from filed matters for a defined group and claim type over a stated period. It states how many matters were filed in the period and how that compares with the prior period.
How is this different from a peer spend survey?
A survey reports what departments say they spend. A benchmark from the filed record reports how long comparable matters actually lasted in a given court and how they resolved, which is the input a budget and an outside counsel plan need.
Next step
Read your claims, venues and dockets from the record.
Tell the Intelligence desk what you hold. You receive a written report from the filed record, with every figure labelled.
Request an assessment