In-House Counsel

One puzzling finding struck to me when I checked the latest poll results of who visits this blog? As of today, 111 people have responded to my poll on the upper right. Law department lawyers are exactly half of them and law department non-lawyers another 10 percent.

What struck me is that law firm lawyers make up a mere 10 percent. This surprisingly low percentage suggests lack of interest by those lawyers in how their legal department clients operate. Close to a third of the material posted here concerns relations with outside counsel, yet outside counsel don?t seem to care (or they don?t take the time to respond to a two-second poll). Almost as odd, a tiny 4.5 percent of the poll respondents are law firm non-lawyers (presumably, marketing staff). Law firms of any size have marketing support, so why wouldn?t tap in?

The name of this blog may put off law firm visitors. And certainly there are many more blogs aimed squarely at law firms. Still, as I close in on 4,800 posts ? a tremendous store of ideas for how legal departments view and use external counsel and even a blog book on the topic ? it leaves me wondering why the readership is not skewed more toward law firms (See my post of Aug. 13, 2009 #1: results from 81 respondents; and Aug. 3, 2009: first 50 respondents.). .

Finally, service providers and others make up 19.8 percent and 3.6 percent respectively. It does not surprise me that vendors to legal departments pay attention to material about their prospective and current clients. Prospering from legal departments is a large cottage industry (See my post of June 11, 2008: cottage industry with 34 references.).