Epiq Systems Second Annual Texas Corporate Counsel Survey Highlights Impact Of Reduced Legal Budgets On Law Firm-Corporate Counsel Relationships

KANSAS CITY, Kan., Aug. 24, 2010 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Epiq Systems, Inc. (Nasdaq:EPIQ), a leading global provider of technology solutions for the legal profession, completed its second annual Texas Corporate Counsel Survey, a qualitative survey that focused on issues facing corporate counsel and law firms in the Texas marketplace. This year's informal survey of 75 corporate counsel and law firms, which included in-depth personal interviews, indicated that corporations were responding favorably to area law firms that were nimble and able to offer flexible billing or alternative fee arrangements.

When Texas corporate counsel were surveyed, "Have you used new firms (this year) other than your traditional law firm partners?," nearly ninety percent of respondents said that they were using or considering new firms outside their standard relationships or, at a minimum, were requiring firms to compete against one another for their work. Last year, only 35 percent of those surveyed said they had moved to using new firms.

Observed Mark Habbinga, Esq., Epiq's Director of eDiscovery Solutions, who conducted the survey, "Many Texas law firms told us that they are locked into a specific business model which affected flexibility in adapting or creating alternative fee arrangements."

The survey indicated that in the past two years, more than 80 percent of counsel respondents noted that they have asked for fee adjustments from their law firms. Additionally 90 percent of outside counsel surveyed said that they asked for caps as part of an alternative fee agreement.

Other alternative fee options utilized in the Texas market and mentioned in the survey included: flat rates for repeatable case types, annual spend flat rates, and various "hybrid models" such as reduced hourly and contingency-based hybrids, bonus-based hybrids, and tiered or blended hourly rates based on litigation phases (pre-filing, discovery, pretrial, trial, and appeal).