Friday, October 15, 2004

IT staffing ratios and budgets

Just in time for everyone's budget planning, LawNet published a staffing and budget survey this week. LawNet reports that the results will be posted in early November and available at no charge to its members. Hildebrant used to conduct a staffing and budget survey, but for the last few years they haven't and there hasn't been any good benchmarks to work from. Recently, Baker Robbins & Co. Solicited the AmLaw 250 to participate in a similar survey, but was asking for $2,500 per firm. What I liked about the LawNet survey, which the BRCO survey didn't have, were questions that allowed the responding firm to 'define' what functions fell under IT and assign FTEs to each function. This was intended to address the common problem of comparing apples to apples, not just in terms of the size of the firm and number of attorneys, but what functions one IT staff was handling versus another. LawNet plans on distributing the survey results in a summary form, but also in Excel to allow for further analysis and comparison.

When the results are in at the end of October, I'll create a link to it.

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