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Focus the Workflows
- March 31, 2018
- Category: Workflows and Workloads
- Publication: Lexpert, Vol. 19, No. 4, March-April 2018
Law departments should move away from open-door policies. Lawyer experience is, on average, more senior than it was 10 years ago, with less delegation by inside counsel than ever. Up to 1/3 of in-house counsel are focused on low-value work. Leadership must identify enough special projects, strategic activity and complex work to replace at least 600 hours per year of practice per lawyer. Failure to act means that the law department is a poor return on investment.
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Resistance or Collaboration
- January 31, 2018
- Category: Managing Total Legal Spend
- Publication: Buying Legal Council, viewed on website November 10, 2017 and Lexpert, Vol. 19, No. 3, January-February 2018
There are 3 ways for Directors of Legal Operations to collaborate with Procurement professionals when the company decides to be more structured when retaining external counsel. The first is to collate solid data on consumption patterns for legal services: fees and hours by area of law; volumes by complexity level; detailed matter budgets. The second opportunity for collaboration concerns leading practices, technology, and infrastructure related to workflows and service delivery. With this comes structured practices and results applied to law firm performance. The third area of collaboration between legal operations and procurement is the migration away from hourly-based fee arrangements.
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Seven Habits for Success
- November 30, 2017
- Category: Performance Management
- Publication: Lexpert, November-December 2017, Vol. 19, No. 1
Value from external counsel with a 7-step program
1. Two years of data covering the number and complexity of all matters
2. Multi-year demand forecast
3. Optimal configuration and convergence of firms
4. Proficiency in the law department with alternative fee arrangements
5. Skill in matter planning and detailed project budgeting
6. Semi-annual performance evaluations
7. General Counsel with a plan to implement the program -
Eight Transformative KPIs
- October 1, 2017
- Category: Performance Management
- Publication: Lexpert, Vol. 19, No. 1, October 2017
Key performance indicators (KPIs) for the law department should be readily recognizable by all business units across the organization. Eight KPIs are described: strategic impact, results, innovation, operating practices, service, knowledge transfer, total legal spend, and external counsel. It is advised these be introduced before the 2018 planning season.
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Budgeting Complex Legal Work
- June 1, 2017
- Category: Managing Total Legal Spend
- Publication: Lexpert, Vol. 18, No. 6, June 2017
Some 80 per cent of law firms have no templates or standards for budgeting complex legal work. Few in-house counsel feel at ease analyzing and challenging matter plans and budgets prepared by law firms.
Budgets should set out the hours for each fee earner by phase and task of a matter. This should be done after communicating planning assumptions to yield a budget plan that is 85 per cent reliable for a most likely outcome rather than a worst-case scenario.
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Strategic Impact
- July 31, 2016
- Category: Positioning and Strategy
- Publication: Lexpert, Vol. 17, No. 9, July-August 2016
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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Value with Innovation in the Law Department
- July 1, 2016
- Category: Positioning and Strategy
- Publication: Juristes d’entreprises, Special Edition, October 2016
Inside counsel operating as the hard-working “artist-in-residence” is not a sustainable model. For the most part, it is not strategic in its approach and there are not enough hours in the day. Innovation should be a stand-alone performance indicator for the law department, because it focuses on strategic initiatives more than on operational support in the delivery of legal services. It requires leadership with a sensible allocation of resources.
For the most part, the best innovations are externally focused. Commercially astute solutions are well-received. A second performance indicator measuring strategic impact with select initiatives underscores the contribution of the law department. It requires innovation and out-of-the-box thinking by the General Counsel.
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The Rest of the World
- May 1, 2016
- Category: Managing Total Legal Spend
- Publication: Lexpert, Vol. 17, No, 7, May 2016
Retaining 100 local law firms in as many countries can be inefficient and expensive even if it is for routine litigation and employment issues. A study of invoices from 25 countries in 4 regions revealed that the scope of work was poorly defined, activity reports were sketchy, and pricing varied from fixed monthly retainers to hourly rates discounted by 70%. The company committed to harmonized practice patterns, centralization in retaining local counsel through regional coordinating firms, fixed fee pricing for 3 years, and matter management and reporting systems to support the new operating protocols.
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Meeting Management Challenges in the Legal Department
- April 1, 2016
- Category: Positioning and Strategy
- Publication: CCCA Magazine, Vol. 10, No. 1, Spring 2016
Four management challenges are being addressed by the law departments of progressive companies:
• Coverage, organization and resources;
• Efficiency, workflows and workloads;
• Value performance, metrics and KPIs; and
• Legal spend and costs.Five steps are described
1. Determine the department’s activity levels;
2. Select a handful of performance indicators that are part of the value proposition;
3. Manage work traffic in the department;
4. Assign and align the right amount of legal and paralegal resource with each user group; and
5. Actively manage the cost of external counsel in two ways. -
Leaning In
- March 1, 2016
- Category: Positioning and Strategy
- Publication: Lexpert, Vol. 17, No. 5, March 2016
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.
Articles on Demand – Archive