A new survey of senior corporate counsel has highlighted improving prospects for litigation work, with more than 40% of respondents expecting an upturn in the next year, reports The Am Law Litigation Daily.

The 2009 Fulbright & Jaworski Litigation Trends report, now in its sixth year, canvassed 267 in-house lawyers from the US and 125 from the UK, with more than half of the respondents representing businesses with revenues of more than $1bn (£610m).

The survey results showed that labour and employment litigation is on the up, with 40% of respondents reporting increases in wage-and-hour and other employment cases over the last year.

Bankruptcy litigation is also on the rise, with 9% of respondents saying they have pending bankruptcy matters, up from 5% in 2008. In addition, regulatory litigation, internal investigations and corruption-related work have all created increased opportunities for outside counsel.

Fulbright litigation department chairman Stephen Dillard said he sees good news in the survey's findings. "This has been a different type of recession," he said. "But there's reason to believe there's going to be more litigation next year than there was last year."

However, patent litigation is seeing a continued downward trend, with only 9% of the largest companies in the survey said they expected to pursue patent infringement claims next year, compared to 12% a year ago. "We have been reducing the number of active cases," one energy company lawyer told surveyors.

Meanwhile, 48% of the US respondents to the survey reported that they now use alternative billing arrangements, the commonly-used being contingent or fixed-fee deals. "That confirms what we are experiencing as practising lawyers," said Dillard. "Our instincts and what we hear on the grapevine tells us that number is going to continue to go up."

However, hourly rates still maintain a powerful hold, with the survey indicating that alternative billing still accounts for only 10%-25% of outside counsel expenditures.

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