ORGANIZING CORPORATE LEGAL SERVICES

The principal question addressed is the extent to which American organizations source legal services they require in a manner consistent with transaction cost economics and agency theory. Transaction cost economics (TCE) is an interdisciplinary undertaking which joins economics with aspects of organizational theory and contract law. TCE views frequency, uncertainty and asset specificity (the extent to which assets have little utility or value except in the context of a particular transaction or relationship) as key variables in determining how a transaction will be structured. Agency theory focuses on identifying the most efficient contract form for a relationship taking into account certain assumptions of self-interest, bounded rationality, risk aversion and the cost of verifying what the agent is doing. A survey was sent to full-time in-house general counsel to collect data on actual practices in sourcing legal services for seven different areas of law