Litigation Trends: How Do You Compare?
Fulbright just released its always-fascinating annual Litigation Trends Survey. Here are some of the highlights:
- More Litigation. For the third year in a row, U.S. companies anticipate an increase in litigation in the coming year.
- Employment Disputes #1. Employment litigation was identified as the top area of increased legal costs and tied for first (with contract disputes) as the most frequent lawsuit type.
- Litigation Costs Up. Companies spending $1 million or more on litigation increased by 18%.
- More Trials. More than half of large companies had at least one case go to trial in the past year.
- Big-$$$ Lawsuits. The number of companies facing lawsuits with more than $20 million at stake is up by 12%.
- Litigation Beats Arbitration. U.S. companies strongly favor litigation over arbitration (55% to 32%, with 13% indicating no preference).
- Average Cost to Litigate. The average costs to litigate a single-plaintiff case is edging closer to $100,000, with 58% of companies reporting an average cost of less than $100,000 and 42% reporting an average above $100,000.
- More In-house. Companies continue to shift toward having more in-house lawyers managing litigation.
- End of the Billable Hour? Companies also continue to increase their use of alternative fee arrangements to control costs.
- What’s Up? Age, race, sex and religious discrimination cases are on the rise. Wage and hour and disability cases are stable. ERISA suits are down.
- Biggest Exposure. Age cases are #1 (35%), followed by race (31%), harassment (30%), sex (28%) and wage and hour (28%).
- Class Actions Down. Class actions remain down from their peak two years ago, with 36% reporting a new class action (versus more than half in 2007).
- More Corruption? The number of companies reporting corruption investigations nearly doubled versus last year.
- Anti-social? Approximately 40% of companies block employees from social networking sites. Those most frequently blocked include Facebook (42%), MySpace (42%), YouTube (37%), Twitter (34%) and LinkedIn (30%).
Click here to download the full report.
