> Edit: Given that this answer has generated some discussion I feel the need to expand on it. The legal team was not expected to sell their services "by the hour". In fact, any discussion about how their services were sold was shut down by the professor. From his point of view, the lawyers were machines and he was asking the question "how much can this machine produce?"
Pricing the value of in-house counsel is an interesting problem in itself (because they typically don't bill by the hour). One could use an insurance policy pricing model (the worst that could happen is a very costly loss in a lawsuit) to determine what's the counsel protecting the company from.