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Evaluating Preferred Law Firms
- March 8, 2023
- Category: Managing Total Legal Spend
- Publication: Canadian Lawyer In-House website, March 7, 2023 Legal Business World, Issue 2 (2023) on page 28
Performance plans provide the structure and content to evaluate preferred law firms. Plans and related metrics – responsiveness, results, efficiency, total legal spend, and unit costs – should be embedded in terms of engagements and multi-year partnering agreements. These metrics are typical and supplemented by targets and specific initiatives.
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Getting Things Done in the Law Department
- February 8, 2023
- Category: Positioning and Strategy
- Publication: Canadian Lawyer In-House website, Feb 6, 2023 Legal Business World magazine, Issue 1 (2023) page 18
This article sets out a Critical Success Factor and three indicators for planning. Five causes of the failure to implement plans are listed. Bossidy and Charan’s seven insights into the execution of plans and work are practical. A case study details one way to organize and execute a multi-faceted business plan for a law department.
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External Counsel & Costs
- January 26, 2023
- Category: Managing Total Legal Spend
- Publication: Legal Business World: Performance for Law Department series e-book # 3
This is a collection of 15 articles and case studies regarding external counsel and costs. They address scoping, budgeting, pricing with alternative fee arrangements, and linking law firm performance to legal fees. Three articles address sourcing legal services: managing the legal supply chain; negotiating with law firms; and seven critical steps for a new deal.
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Does Timekeeping Have a Place in Law Departments?
- December 27, 2022
- Category: Workflows and Workloads
- Publication: Legal Business World, Issue 10 (2022) at pg. 36 Canadian Lawyer In-House, Jan 10, 2023
Timekeeping by in-house counsel is unusual, with fewer than 25% of law departments requiring the practice. Most are public sector law departments. Communicating the value of the in-house counsel contribution depends on framing a new value proposition that includes service, results and costs.
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Top Performance and Knowledge Workers
- December 7, 2022
- Category: Performance Management
- Publication: Legal Business World, Issue 9 (2022) at page 18 Canadian Lawyer In-House website, December 9, 2022
Clients want to measure the effectiveness of legal services by introducing “metrics”. They want an answer in terms the company can understand. The article applies Thomas Davenport’s 6 dimensions of knowledge workers as a guide for setting goals and getting results from legal counsel. Knowledge workers crave autonomy, it is usually difficult to specify detailed steps and the flow of knowledge compared to other types of work and serving commitment to anything depends on “fair processes” to get there. Nevertheless, it is possible to carefully assess workflow and workloads of law departments and their law firms to eliminate work and advisory functions that are operational support but of little strategic value.
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7 Critical Steps for a New Deal
- December 3, 2022
- Category: Managing Total Legal Spend
- Publication: Legal Operators, Issue 3 (2022)
Successfully reducing legal spend in 2023 cannot take the form of a race to the bottom of the barrel for lower hourly rates. Seven critical steps are described: Secure 2 years’ worth of detailed data from law firms; prepare a multi-year forecast of requirements for external counsel; innovate in configuring primary and other firms by region with longer-term commitments; ensure Legal and Procurement professionals are proficient in non-hourly arrangements; apply optimal staffing patterns to individual matters; evaluate firms every 6 months against 4 KPIs; and have the CLO sign-off on a written project plan to implement the 6 previous steps.
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Organization and Resources of the Law Dept, Performance and Metrics, and Benchmarking, Surveys and Retreats
- October 31, 2022
- Category: Organization and Resources, Performance Management, Benchmarking and Surveys
- Publication: Legal Business World, Performance for Law Departments, E-book #2
This e-book reprints a portion of our articles from our on-going series of articles in the on-line magazine Legal Business World. This second, short 47-page volume contains 2 articles on law department organization and resources, 4 articles on Performance and Metrics, and a final 2 articles on benchmarking, surveys and retreats.
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Too Little, Too Late?
- October 31, 2022
- Category: Positioning and Strategy
- Publication: Legal Business World, Issue 8 (2022) at pg. 22 Canadian Lawyer In-House website, Nov 1st, 2022
Most law departments do not possess the information or analyze the data that they have to leverage law firm capabilities. The result is a default to retail hourly pricing and the usual discounts for volume.
Too few firms have robust templates for matter plans and budgets. Planning assumptions and a percentage certainty by phase and task are the exception.
When asked, law firms always meet the challenge to produce data about practice patterns, to generate robust matter plans and budgets, and to accelerate the introduction of alternative fee arrangements. -
Strategic Impact
- September 23, 2022
- Category: Positioning and Strategy
- Publication: Canadian Lawyer In-House website, August 2nd, Legal Business World, Issue 7 (2022)
You get what you measure. A key performance indicator (KPI) for “Strategic Impact” challenges the law department to choose its priorities, show more leadership, offer more resources to corporate business priorities, and re-think its critical competencies for senior counsel.
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Law Dept Business Plans, Strategy and Workflows and Workloads
- August 30, 2022
- Category: Positioning and Strategy, Workflows and Workloads
- Publication: Legal Business World E-book Part 1
This e-book reprints a portion of our articles from our on-going series of articles in the on-line magazine Legal Business World. This first, short 64-page volume contains 6 articles on law department business plans and strategy and a further 5 articles on workflows and workloads.
Articles on Demand – Archive