Baker walks a lot of fine lines: He observes his characters, with their anarchic misbehavior and mistakes, with
a total lack of judgment, while also refusing to romanticize them.
I have tried to bring some visibility to the question
of how much is paid in settlements by companies in the United States, but the bits
of data are fragmented (See my post
of May 30, 2005:
lack of benchmark data about settlements; July 16, 2005: settlements as a percentage
of total legal spend; Feb. 13, 2008: settlement ratios by practice area; July 16, 2005: settlements and
judgments in relation to outside counsel spending; Jan. 20, 2009: settlement costs in relation to costs
of outside counsel; and Oct. 27, 2010: data on settlements.).