Small is beautiful. That seems to be the message coming from corporate counsel as this year’s panel season continues in full swing.
The past 12 months have seen an unprecedented number of panel reviews as in-house counsel have come under increasing pressure to justify their budgets. In Legal Director’s Benchmarker on fees (March 2003) an overwhelming majority (72%) of the general counsel questioned said that their chief financial officer or CEO was ‘concerned’ about the level of legal fees being spent by the company, a figure rising to 100% among companies with a annual legal spend of more than £5m.
