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.

This entry was posted on Monday, October 19th, 2009 at 10:16 am and is filed under Employment Law News, Litigation, Trends. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.