When discussing the relationship between in-house legal
teams and external law firms, the most newsworthy events tend to be the creation or review of panels.
However, the ROI on engaging external law firms will depend at least as much – if not more – on how those relationships are managed, as it will on which firms are used.
In this article, we look at some of the key stages involved in working with external law firms and explore how – and why – in-house legal teams should be looking to optimise their processes and systems.
When discussing the relationship between in-house legal teams and external law firms, the most newsworthy events tend to be the creation of new panels and large businesses engaging in panel reviews.
However, the ROI on engaging external law firms will depend
at least as much – if not more – on how those relationships are managed, as it will on which firms are used.
In this article, we look at some of the key stages involved in working with external law firms and explore how – and why – in-house legal teams should be looking to optimise their processes and systems.
In many cases, individual lawyers will be left to their own devices to email a handful of firms, including whatever information they feel is relevant and then wait for responses to trickle in.
With responses arriving at different times, it is then necessary to dig through emails in order to find and compare them.
This only gets harder to follow as further comms (e.g. queries/responses/negotiations) are exchanged.
It’s also problematic from a management information perspective since there is no central record of this activity for future reference or analysis.
Finally, without a standardised approach, the process will take longer than it should since lawyers are reinventing the wheel for each request and responses will not be presented in a consistent way that aids easy comparison.
First, wherever possible, quote requests – and the firms’ responses – should be templatized to deliver a quicker and more consistent request and comparison process. Core elements in a quote request template will be things such as scope of work; budget; preferred fee arrangements and relevant dates/deadlines. These can then be supplemented with any bespoke components to suit your business and/or work type, possibly producing a handful of templates tailored to different circumstances.
To simplify comparison, the firms should also be directed to format their responses on a suitable template, clearly setting out the quote and fee structure, together with any proposed conditions/caveats.
While templates are a good start, they do not address the challenges that arise out of using email to manage the process or the lack of an audit trail that results.
This has prompted many in-house teams to explore alternative solutions. Indeed, Tabled moves the process out of email and enables in-house teams to manage the end-to-end process of requesting, reviewing and tracking law firm quotes in one central location (to learn more please get in touch).
Another disadvantage of an inconsistent and siloed approach to instructing external law firms is that there is no central record of which firms are working on which matters.
Some teams try to solve this by requiring anyone that instructs an external law firm to record this on a spreadsheet. Of course, this extra admin is rarely welcome, is not particularly user-friendly and relies on people remembering (or being regularly chased) to keep it up to date.
This is just one example of why it’s time to move away from spreadsheets for matter management in general.
As companies increasingly collaborate internally through digital platforms, in-house legal teams wonder why they can’t engage in a similar fashion with external law firms.
Pressure to reduce external spend is also driving an expectation that law firms should use technology to engage and collaborate more efficiently.
However, relying on law firms to deliver this shift can be challenging.
Take client portals, for example.
First, these are often relatively static – clients can access information – but are unable to collaborate in real-time.
Second, if working with multiple law firms, each of those portals operate in their own silos, behind separate logins, with different functions and user-experiences.
Tabled solves this by allowing in-house legal teams to manage and collaborate with multiple law firms from their own workspace, consolidating data and eliminating the inconvenience of switching between multiple external platforms.
External lawyers can join a client’s workspace individually or – for maximum benefits on both sides – the firm can create its own Tabled workspace which can be securely connected to one or more client workspaces.
The rationale for optimising the way you work with external law firms goes beyond getting to the desired outcome as quickly and efficiently as possible.
Gaps and inefficiencies in the process can lead to risks and missed opportunities which go beyond the ‘end’ of the matter e.g.
1) Lack of a robust audit trail in the event that a problem/issue arises in the future, whether that’s with the law firm (e.g. around billing) or in relation to matter itself;
2) Lost opportunity to properly store/find/reuse past work – this can lead to people paying more than once for the same/overlapping work;
3) Difficult to analyse and compare the relative performance of the different law firms in a clear and data-driven manner.
Tabled is a legal work management and collaboration platform that brings together in-house legal teams, their internal clients/stakeholders and outside counsel.
This connected approach means in-house legal teams can manage all their work from one digital workspace which is optimised to suit their needs, for maximum efficiency and visibility.
Key benefits include:
· A streamlined process to request, track and review quotes from outside counsel;
· Quickly and easily assign matters directly to outside counsel;
· Manage and collaborate with multiple law firms from one central workspace owned and managed by the in-house legal team;
· User-friendly dashboards to monitor the status of matters being handled by outside counsel; and
· On-demand access to repositories of resources such as know-how, templates and advice shared by your law firms.
Without proper processes and tools in place, working with external law firms can be more frustrating and time-consuming than it needs to be.
If key communications, documents and data are fragmented across multiple email inboxes, spreadsheets, shared folders and peoples’ own heads – as well as potentially any external portals offered by the firms themselves – efficiency is compromised and the opportunity to unlock data-driven insights is lost.
With external spend being such an important and visible metric for most in-house legal teams, there is a strong case for investing in the work and systems needed to streamline processes, introduce consistency and ensure that valuable data isn’t lost.
To learn more about how Tabled can help, please get in touch or sign up for a demo using the form below.