Excerpt from Fulbright's 6th Annual Litigation Trends Survey Report
The primary topics include litigation costs and trends, government and regulatory matters, patent infringement, labor and employment, class actions and electronic discovery.
Highlights:
- For the third year in a row, there is an increase in respondents expecting more disputes over the next 12 months.
- Bankruptcy, class actions and regulatory actions are all up this year. The financial services sector, in particular, had a jump in regulatory actions.
- More than a third of respondents have increased their use of alternative fee arrangements because of the economic downturn.
- One-third of the U.S. companies conducting internal investigations requiring assistance of outside counsel reported the matter to a regulatory agency.
- Almost a quarter of companies with $1 billion or more in revenues expect more internal investigations over the next 12 months.
- The incidence of companies reporting corruption/bribery investigations over the past 12 months has nearly doubled from last year.
- Among U.S. companies, 13% report having an import/export sanctions investigatio requiring outside counsel in this past year.
- About four in 10 of all repspondents have seen increases in wage and hour, multi-plaintiff labor and employment cases over the past year.
- Almost a quarter of the public companies and those with $1billion or more in revenues expect more international artibrations in the next 12 months.
- Anywhere from a third to more than 40% of companies surveyed block internal network users from various social media Web sites.
To view the full, detailed presentation, please click here.
Fulbright & Jaworski, LLP