In-House Interrogatory

Asked: Our weekly question to the In-House community

In-house legal departments are getting fed up with paying outside counsel for soft costs like food and photocopying fees, The Wall Street Journal reported this week.

In-house counsel are pushing back against law firms charging them for legal research, photocopying and word processing costs according to a study cited in the article.

Companies’ legal departments argue that these costs are included in law firm overhead and therefore should not be charged to them.

So, here’s our question for you:

Should companies be charged for soft costs like catered lunches and photocopying by outside counsel?

Leave a comment below or email me.

Need to Know:

• Ballard Spahr’s Baltimore office and Capital One’s in-house legal department teamed up last week in Bethesda to provide free estate planning services to first responders.
• Rite Aid’s former general counsel loses a third case against his ex-boss.
• Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. named a new general counsel.
• Law schools are offering more courses for in-house careers. (The Daily Record reported on the trend in Maryland earlier this year.)
• Kia Motors puts outside counsel through a technology test before hiring.
•  Transocean Ltd.’s general counsel resigned.
•  Spirit AeroSystems Inc. named a new general counsel.
• University of California San Francisco’s chief legal counsel retired after 30 years.

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