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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.
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Legal Project Management is Overdue
- August 17, 2022
- Category: Workflows and Workloads
- Publication: Canadian Lawyer In-House, website May 11, 2022 Legal Business World, Issue 6 (2022); page 24
The article suggests six ways that legal project management (LPM) and budgeting add value in complex matters. The roles of external counsel and law departments in LPM are detailed. Law departments should ensure that matter budgets for complex work include planning assumptions for phases and tasks, together with a percentage probability of correctness.
Legal project budgeting should be correlated with a suitable pricing model if it is to provide the right incentives for all involved.
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The Director of Legal Operations
- August 16, 2022
- Category: Organization and Resources
- Publication: Canadian Lawyer In-House website, Sept 5th, 2022 Magazine for Legal Operations Professionals, No. 2 (2022) at pg. 40
Four factors drive law departments to hire legal operations professionals and management: resource management and organization including staffing, budgets, facilities and technology; increasing demand for legal and advisory services; more innovative and effective management of external counsel; and the insatiable appetite to demonstrate measurable value of the law department to the company. The article profiles 5 Directors of Legal Operations suggesting that law departments with more than 10 lawyers should have one on board.
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Benchmarking Legal Operations Maturity
- April 26, 2022
- Category: Benchmarking and Surveys
- Publication: Legal Operations, Issue 1 (2022) at pg. 26 Legal Business World, Issue 6 (2021) at pg. 46 Canadian Lawyer In-House, posted June 19th, 2020
The article profiles the ACC report on benchmarking law department operations and best practices across 15 functions and 92 sub-functions. The article examines the External Resources Management function and its 13 sub-functions. From 50% to 75% of the 316 respondents are only in the early stages of adopting leading practices.
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The State of Corporate Law Departments
- April 20, 2022
- Category: Benchmarking and Surveys
- Publication: Legal Business World magazine, Issue 4 (2022) Canadian Lawyer In-House website, posted 19 Apr 22
Three factors likely to improve the contribution of corporate law departments are critiqued. Taken from Thomson Reuters Institute’s “2022 State of Corporate Law Departments: Benchmark, Optimize and Innovate”, they are strategic positioning, effective partnering, and the right metrics. Legal leadership is encouraged to read the report.
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Law Department Condition: Getting By or Critical?
- April 14, 2022
- Category: Positioning and Strategy
- Publication: Legal Business World, Issue 3 (2022), page 26 Canadian Lawyer In-House website, posted 5 January 2022
The article reviews 6 critical success factors, (CSF) for a successful law department – especially if they must add value to the company. The composite score for most departments is only 5 on 10. Priorities for improvement are proposed.
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An Innovation Audit for the Law Department
- March 11, 2022
- Category: Positioning and Strategy, Organization and Resources
- Publication: Legal Business World, Issue 5 (2022) Canadian Lawyer In-House, posted March 8, 2022
The innovation audit can be applied to law departments to identify organizational roadblocks and challenges. A 45-question survey can reveal predictors and indicators for law department innovation. The questions are distributed across 5 categories: vision and culture, passion, relationships and networking, resource commitment. and measurement and reward systems. The article goes on to suggest potential initiatives for innovation.
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UK Expert Perspectives
- February 14, 2022
- Category: Positioning and Strategy
- Publication: Canadian Lawyer In-House website, Feb 8th, 2022 Legal Business World, Issue 2 (2022), page 34
Richard interviewed 5 UK Experts : Mark Ford at E+Y Law, Ian Gray at Eversheds Sutherland LLP, Nick Williams at Proxima, Stuart Dodds at Positive Pricing et Deborah Watson at Coate O’Grady. The article features fresh thinking and energy in the market supporting corporate and government law departments.
Articles on Demand – Archive