According to a survey of corporate counsel by international law firm Fulbright & Jaworski released in October, U.S. companies worth $1 billion or more are fielding an average of 556 legal cases, with nearly half facing 50 new suits annually. Insurers lead the way by confronting 1,696 lawsuits, followed by retailers and energy firms. On average, based on responses from 311 in-house law departments in the U.S. (out of 422 total), U.S. businesses face 305 lawsuits. And it's not just a domestic attribute: "More than one-third of companies said that up to 20 percent of their dockets originate in foreign venues," said the law firm, "proof that U.S.-style litigation is going global." Among other findings:

• Outside the U.S., U.S. companies said they currently faced the most lawsuits in North Asia (Japan and Korea) followed by South America, Western Europe (excluding the U.K.), Eastern Europe, the U.K., and Canada. In-house lawyers named East Asia (China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Macau) as the foreign locale likely to generate the largest increases in litigation during the next three years, "a possible reflection of the region's rapid growth and reported laxity in certain areas of legal compliance in such areas as intellectual property and financial services compliance." Among arbitral institutions worldwide, U.S. companies overwhelmingly preferred the American Arbitration Association's International Centre for Dispute Resolution. Their second choice was the International Chamber of Commerce based in Paris, followed by the London Court of International Arbitration.
• U.S. companies report spending 71 percent of their overall estimated legal budgets on disputes. Large U.S. companies commit an average of $19.8 million to litigation, approximately 58% of total average legal spending of $34.2 million.
• Respondents' leading litigation fear was labor and employment claims, followed by contract disputes, regulatory actions, patent and other intellectual property suits, and class actions.
• Among several choice pieces of advice to outside counsel was this comment: "Don't underestimate the sophistication and knowledge of inside counsel — we know much more than you think we do."
• Nearly two thirds of companies had undertaken internal investigations in the past year requiring outside counsel. "Partly this is an outgrowth of our modern regulatory and enforcement climate in which companies are put on fast-track notice by government agencies that an action may be forthcoming, which prompts them to conduct a full-scale investigation," said Stephen C. Dillard, chair of Fulbright & Jaworski's global litigation practice.
• Engineering and construction firms averaged $39 million annually on litigation expenditures — not only more than three times the survey average, but 59% higher than what the average U.S. company spent on all its legal work (an estimated $17 million). Insurers came in a close second, averaging $36 million for litigation (recall their average industry caseload of 1,700 matters), while manufacturers and energy concerns also skewed higher than the survey average, hitting $14.3 million and $13.5 million respectively for their lit costs. Tech companies averaged $11.8 million, followed by health care ($10.3 million), financial services ($6.3 million), pharmaceutical ($2.8 million), and retail ($2.1 million). Real estate firms came off relatively light on litigation spending, at an average of only $389,000 per year.
• In the real estate industry alone: 13 percent of companies surveyed expect their U.S. case loads to increase next year; 57 percent need the services of six or more outside law firms to handle their legal disputes work; 25 percent have had at least one $20 million+ lawsuit initiated against them in the last year; 25 percent have class actions pending against them; and 60 percent have conducted an internal investigation requiring the assistance of outside counsel within the last year.

What does the National Association of Manufacturers think of this week's election results? Check out their press briefing.

The Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council on Nov. 1 released its eleventh annual rankings of the states according to their public policy climates for small business and entrepreneurship in the "Small Business Survival Index 2006." The Index analyzes 29 major government-imposed or government-related costs affecting small businesses and entrepreneurs. SBE Council chief economist Raymond J. Keating says the top states in the ranking have seen an increase of more than 2.1 million in population at the expense of the bottom half, and that job creation has followed suit: "From July 2003 to July 2006, for example, job growth registered 5.3 percent in the top 25 states in the Index," he said, "compared to 3.4 percent in the bottom 25 and the District of Columbia. That means that the rate of job creation was 71 percent faster in the top 25 states versus the lower 25 states and D.C."

Business climate factors affect those considering China too, and they didn't get any easier in September, when six regulatory agencies, including the People's Republic of China's Ministry of Commerce enacted new "Rules on the Merger with and Acquisition of Domestic Enterprises by Foreign Investors." The new rules come at the same time as the country's Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs declared via a study that 34 joint-venture or foreign-owned companies were in violation of water pollution guidelines, most of them in Shanghai. The total number of violators was higher than 2,700.

The McKinsey Global Survey of Business Executives finds that 46 percent of 3,172 respondents plan to increase the size of their work forces over the next six months, and that most of those new jobs will take place in the same country as their companies' corporate headquarters. As the graph below illustrates, North American executives are the most bullish about growing in their own countries, followed by those in the Asia Pacific.

A recent Global Office Real Estate Review recently published by Colliers International found Moscow to lead the globe in office construction, followed by Dubai, Beijing, Shanghai and Johannesburg.

In a Nov. 1 release, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission reported it has taken final action to establish a Forward Capacity Market (FCM) to address deficiencies in New England's generation capacity markets. In a separate order, the Commission approved proposed tariff revisions implementing the transition. As reported in the September issue of Site Selection, capacity constraints have been straining industrial and other development. But according to FERC, in 2005, generation capacity additions in New England were only 11 megawatts as peak demand rose by 2,700 megawatts. "This order marks final Commission action to help assure that New England has an adequate electricity supply in the future," said FERC Chairman Joseph Kelliher. "I commend the parties for entering into this settlement, and taking steps to make sure the region has reliable electricity supplies at a just and reasonable cost. The region acted to prevent a crisis, and for that they should be applauded."

As of Nov. 1, new "all appropriate inquiry" rules took effect that change the procedures used by purchasers of contaminated properties to achieve "innocent landowner" status and thereby avoid penalties imposed through CERCLA. "The new AAI rules require a purchaser to retain a qualified environmental professional to conduct an appropriate study and, for the first time, the federal government has defined what 'environmental professional' means," said Institute of Brownfield Professionals [www.brownfieldpros.org] President W. Jerrold Samford, P.G., R.B.P. According to the new rules, an "environmental professional" is an individual who has the education, training, and experience necessary to exercise the professional judgment needed to develop opinions and conclusions about conditions that indicate that CERCLA-listed environmental contaminants have been or could be released on, at, in, or to a property. The individual also needs to have a state- or tribal-issued certification or license and three years of relevant full-time work experience; or a baccalaureate degree or higher in science or engineering and five years of relevant full-time work experience; or ten years of relevant full-time work experience. However, IBP, in emphasizing its own rigorous credentialing process, says that the rules have still not gone far enough.

Looking to attract the very popular life science sector, or looking to hire professionals in that sector? According to a salary survey sponsored by The Scientist, there was an average 7.2-percent pay increase for U.S. life scientists, raising the median income for life scientists with a doctorate and significant work experience to $74,000. The survey also says that scientists with doctorates working in consulting, production/quality control, administration, marketing/sales or patents/trademarks can earn more than $100,000 annually.