Fullbright Report: Employment Law GCs' Greatest Concern

And all the associates deleted their vacations...

Fulbright & Jaworski’s influential Litigation Trends Survey just came out this week, and it has pretty interesting results that shrinking L&E departments should be blowing up poster-sized.

The “we’re-too-big-to-all-be-lawyering”-sized multinational law firm funds an annual survey of in-house counsel in the U.S. and U.K., asking them about their satisfaction with outside counsel and their greatest litigation-related interests. Topping the list of GC’s concerns this year?

You people.

Yep, as reported by Jay Shepherd at Gruntled Employees, the Fullbright Report (our term - we think it sounds official that way) cites employment disputes as the #1 concern of in-house attorneys, with 43% of the vote (contracts, regulatory and securities matters filled out the remainder of the top 5).

When asked about actual pending litigation, the results were the same: L&E followed by contracts, and then all the other stuff.

Also interesting: the stakes, and the number of class actions, are apparently rising considerably. Manpower’s Mark Toth:

More than 50% of companies face at least one class action, compared to only 34% in 2006 and 16% in 2005. In addition, more than 40% of companies now spend more than $1 million annually on litigation and virtually all companies reported having at least one $20+ million lawsuit pending.

So, tell your bosses – if they want to appease their clients, they clearly need to hire more labor and employment attorneys.

Conveniently, we know some interested parties about to graduate law school. Any resume requests can be sent to currentemployment@gmail.com.