Restructuring In-House Counsel's Utilization of Law Firms: Reducing Legal Spend without Increasing Risk

February 2008

Abstract

Traditional assumptions underpinning the outsourcing of all aspects of cases to law firms by in-house counsel should be revisited in view of recent seismic changes in the legal environment. Law firms are no longer presumptively the best qualified or cost-efficient sources to perform many tasks, particularly in the document-related area. The exponential growth of content created by emails and other forms of electronic data has caused document-related activities to be the predominant category of overall legal spend, approximately 70%. Law firms routinely outsource these low-level tasks to third-party vendors and charge a large mark-up for doing so. They also make critical and costly decisions regarding legal technology and also outsource the work. This begs a litany of questions: should in-house counsel restructure the way they utilize law firms? If so, can they take on internal supervision of many of those tasks assigned to law firms that the firms outsource? Can this restructuring be effected without overburdening internal resources and creating additional risk? This article examines those questions and concludes that by restructuring their utilization of law firms, in-house counsel can reduce legal spend as much as 30% without increasing risk.

Authors

Mark Cohen

Chief Executive Officer, Qualitas Knowledge Management, USA

For twenty-two years, Mark was an internationally recognized civil trial lawyer, founder and managing partner of a national litigation boutique firm. He is a former Assistant United States Attorney (Civil Division) and earned two Department of Justice awards in recognition of his meritorious service. After serving as the youngest partner in one of the nation’s first national law firms, he founded and was the managing partner of Mark A. Cohen & Associates, P.A., a highly successful litigation firm. Mark personally represented more than 50 of the Fortune 500 companies, as well as 5 foreign sovereign nations. He tried 57 major civil cases during his career and was lead counsel in 12 class action lawsuits. Mark was appointed Receiver of a large, international aviation parts business. He ran the company, personally oversaw litigation around the world, and repatriated more than $50MM of assets. He also served as outside general counsel to 3 insurance companies and as national supervising counsel to several other major corporations. Since leaving the active practice of law, Mark has sat on several corporate Boards and has spent the past 18 months creating QUALITAS. He is active in a number of civic and philanthropic interests, serving on the Board of The Washington Ballet and The Corcoran College of Art and Design, as Trustee of a charitable Foundation he helped to create, and as a Founder of Mt. Sinai Hospital, Miami Beach, Florida. Mark is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Vassar College, the institution’s first Rhodes Scholar Nominee. He earned 3 postgraduate degrees from Oxford University as well as a J.D. degree from the University of Connecticut.

Companies

Qualitas Knowledge Management

Qualitas offers law firms and legal departments dramatically lower risks and lower costs of managing legal-based activities. The legal industry is experiencing significant challenges caused by the explosion of documents and email, regulatory changes, the geographic dispersion of work centers, and rising costs. These conditions are of concern to every industry today….calling for a continual search for improved management of legal processes. They also concern many departments within an organization that must participate in responding to corporate-wide events, such as subpoenas for documents or the management of contracts (where the Office of General Counsel often has responsibility for only a fraction of a company’s active agreements).

Restructuring In-House Counsel's Utilization of Law Firms: Reducing Legal Spend without Increasing Risk

Abstract

Authors

Companies

Qualitas Knowledge Management

Qualitas Knowledge Management

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