Call it keeping up with the Joneses (or at least the Jones Days): Two new products provide peeks into the billing rates being charged by major law firms to allow benchmarking of their financial performance.

The first, Peer Monitor from Thomson Reuters, enables large law firms to slice and dice financial data aggregated from other firms so that they can compare their performance against their competitors. Firms can use it to help set billing rates, assess productivity and manage expenses, whether firmwide or for specific practice groups or offices.

The other new product, LexisNexis Counsel Benchmarking, is designed not for law firms but for corporate legal departments. It provides law firm billing data they can use to plan and budget for litigation and to help determine the rates they should pay outside counsel.

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