Legal Process Improvement
Improving Rate Management
While the rate management process isn’t something corporate law departments can totally control, most exert substantially less control than they could by taking a somewhat passive approach. Law firms, who have “skin in the game” in the form of a profit motive that corporate law departments do not, clearly put more effort and thought into rate negotiations than does the median corporate law department. They also are much, much more likely to incorporate rate benchmarking into their process. The end result is, most corporate law departments are price-takers, not price makers.
Hire me, and we’ll change that.
I’ve has consulted extensively with dozens of legal departments about their rate management processes during my tenure at both Elevate Services and Wolters Kluwer ELM Solutions, one of the world’s largest and most established legal technology companies. I edited the 2022 Wolters Kluwer ELM Solutions Real Rate Report, the world’s leading source of legal rate benchmarking data, and have spent hundreds of hours working with the engineers and data scientists on the process and methodology behind that report. If your rate management process needs an overhaul or you currently suffer from a “process of no process,” I can help you put together a plan that makes rate management faster, easier, and more effective at controlling costs.
For some of my research and thoughts on how corporate law departments can become more assertive in rate negotiations, check out some of the following content:
Fighting Back Inflation: Legal Spend Management Tools to Navigate an Uncertain Economy (starting around the 26 minute mark)
Many Legal Departments Lack “Gumption” When Negotiating Outside Counsel Rates
How Financial Services Companies can Better Control Law Firm Rate Hikes
As Law Firms Push Aggressive Rate Increases, Clients Have Room to Negotiate
Swept Up in ‘Awe,” Legal Departments Fail to Push Back on Rates at Biggest Law Firms
Other Business Processes
The average corporate law department has dozens and dozens of processes, some of which go smoothly and others that are cumbersome, ad-hoc, or non-existent. In many cases current law department personnel had no hand in creating these processes, but inherited them from prior leadership that did not have the time or expertise to design, build and maintain a quality process. Law departments that want to take things to the next level should hire a consultant who can provide an objective, outsider's perspective on the current quality of the process and a path for improving it going forward.
Processes needing improvement could be anything, but here are some examples where I have been able to help law departments in the past:
Overhauling the process whereby the organization works together with outside counsel to create, record, modify, enforce, and report on budgets on individual legal matters
Overhauling some or all of the four phases of matter lifecycle management
intake/triage
planning
execution
review / scorecarding
Feeding information gleaned from the scorecarding/review process of matter lifecycle management into related processes, such as preferred provider panel creation and management, and the hourly rate negotiation process
Matter RFP processes and other processes where vendors are chosen and/or matters are priced into flat fees or other alternative fee arrangements
Managing your portfolio of alternative fee arrangements
Reporting processes, including periodic financial metrics, budgeting, diversity tracking, and tracking other law department goals
Establishing and maintaining quickpay arrangements
Processes to measure and maintain data hygiene
The legal reserves / contingent liabilities process
Risk reporting
CLE compliance
I put an emphasis on complexity reduction in my process design approach, removing unnecessary or low-ROI steps to create processes that are low-maintenance, boosting adoption. I also put an emphasis on listening and communication, painstakingly diagramming your processes and working with you to ensure both the current and desired future state of your process are represented accurately. My approach is tool-agnostic; we can use whatever tools you currently have or, if you aren't satisfied with those, we can find a new way.
Better processes increase business velocity by reducing cycle times and freeing up attorney bandwidth to concentrate on actual legal work rather than the performance of legal business procedures. For corporate law departments that want to take a proactive approach and prove that they are true businesspeople, process improvement is one of the key ways to demonstrate to the c-suite and other stakeholders that you “get it.”