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Abandoning Hourly Pricing for Legal Services
- June 24, 2021
- Category: Managing Total Legal Spend
- Publication: Canadian Lawyer In-House, posted June 24, 2021
Several building blocks for pricing were presented. These include multi-year forecasts of the demand for legal services, why alternative fee arrangements (AFAs) should be prioritized in Requests for Proposals (RFPs), the importance of setting firm pricing targets when sourcing legal services, the significant impact of developing optimal staffing distributions for various categories of legal work, replacing individual billing rates with blended rates, and finally how to pay for law firm performance. Four law department surveys form part of the article.
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Sourcing and Scoping Legal Services
- June 15, 2021
- Category: Managing Total Legal Spend
- Publication: Legal Business World, Issue 3 (2021) pg 20
Several steps for the Law Department and Procurement are described to formalize a collaboration arrangement to source external legal services. These include a formal program, non-financial objectives and financial targets, and detailing responsibilities for legal leadership, legal operations, and Procurement.
Scoping is that portion of the Request for Proposals designed to inform law firms of the scope of work to achieve the company’s objectives. This part of the article focuses on portfolios of legal work and multiple jurisdictions. The importance of historical data, preferred practice patterns by legal specialty for law firms, and four considerations when developing multi-year projections are outlined. -
Negotiating Legal Fees
- April 29, 2021
- Category: Managing Total Legal Spend
- Publication: Canadian Lawyer In-House
Six non-financial and eight financial elements are listed as objectives when negotiating fees with external counsel. Provisional work allocations by law firms and two rounds of fee negotiations are described. Negotiation logistics and administrative support requirements are proposed.
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Can Perpetual Power Corp. Get Off the Clock?
- April 26, 2021
- Category: Managing Total Legal Spend
- Publication: Legal Business World magazine; and Canadian Lawyer In-House website
This case study shows how three different law firms can offer simpler work intake and allocation protocols, and move away from hourly billing in order to secure predictable pricing that is effective for multi-year portfolios of legal work. The prerequisite is a well-drafted RFP based on solid data analytics. The scope of work should set hour work volumes and complexity levels for each legal specialty.
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Pricing Legal Services
- April 15, 2021
- Category: Managing Total Legal Spend
- Publication: Lexpert, February 2016 at pg 66
A pathway to non-hourly fees for regular and complex legal work is outlined. The most appropriate configuration of alternative fee arrangements will stimulate efficiency, effectiveness and innovation in external counsel. The article simulates a costing of work allocation to multiple firms. Four factors are proposed when evaluating the projected costs of external counsel when conducting a sourcing initiative.
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Scoping Legal Services
- April 1, 2021
- Category: Managing Total Legal Spend
- Publication: Lexpert, February 2016 at pg 66
Scoping is that portion of the Request for Proposals designed to inform law firms of the scope of work to achieve the company’s objectives. The article focuses on portfolios of work and multiple jurisdictions. The importance of historical data, preferred practice patterns by legal specialty for law firms, and four considerations when developing multi-year projections are outlined.
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Securing Sponsorship from Legal
- March 18, 2021
- Category: Managing Total Legal Spend
- Publication: Lexpert, February 2016 at pg 66
The article describes some steps for the Law Department and Procurement to formalize a collaboration arrangement for sourcing external legal services. These include a formal program, non-financial objectives and financial targets, and detailing responsibilities for legal leadership, legal operations, and Procurement.
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The Definitive Guide to Buying Legal Services
- March 15, 2021
- Category: Managing Total Legal Spend
- Publication: Lexpert, February 2016 at pg 66
As one of 17 co-authors, Richard wrote the chapters on Securing Sponsorship from Legal, Scoping Legal Services, Pricing Legal Services, Negotiating Legal Fees. Released in early March 2021, the Definitive Guide contains insights from North American and European procurement, management consultants, and legal and technology professionals. It should be read by law department leadership and law firms alike.
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LEAN for Law Departments and Law Firms
- March 4, 2021
- Category: Positioning and Strategy
- Publication: Canadian Lawyer In-House, May 13th, 2019
Six processes support process improvement. The first three focus on the customer for value engagement. They include value creation, figuring out how the work gets done and removing waste. The fourth requires evidence-based decision-making, fifth is people empowerment, and the last is sustainable process improvement.
Process improvement will be successful when client behaviours change to require less legal service and more self-sufficiency from clients. -
Priorities and Backlogs
- January 8, 2021
- Category: Workflows and Workloads
- Publication: Canadian Lawyer In-House, posted 7 January 2021; and Legal Business World, Issue 1 (2021)
Law departments do not allocate work like law firms. There are rarely any junior lawyers and too many paralegal tasks are done by lawyers. Accurate data on the number of matters, complexity levels, and hours by client is hard to come by without timekeeping, though techniques for accurate estimates are readily available. General Counsel are challenged to change resource allocation patterns, defaulting instead to simply responding to daily demands for service. Inside counsel are able to estimate the proportion of their year spent on matters that require 0-5 hours, 6-25 hours and more than 25 hours. Some law departments and senior counsel spend as much as 40% of their time on operational support usually on matters requiring less than 5 hours to complete. It is difficult to be strategic when one is engaged in this way.
Articles on Demand – Archive