Negotiating IT Service Contracts – In House v Private Practice Legal Models

Abstract

I have been privileged to work over my career as a partner in private practice with leading City firms in London and as a senior in-house lawyer in global companies. Indeed I have moved from industry to private practice and then back again. For a significant portion of this time I have been advising on and negotiating contracts for the provision of information technology (IT) services and the resolution of post contract delivery issues. This has given me a unique perspective on the advantages and disadvantages of these respective roles. The law is the same, the technology is the same, the delivery challenges are still there, but the lens through which we see the professional service we provide is different. So to some extent are the perspectives of the external and in-house “clients” we deliver these services to. This article builds on that experience to explain the differences and to explore how we can learn from them. One of the critical aspects of this is the interface between the in-house team and the external law firm and how this can best operate to meet the requirements of our ultimate clients. I have discovered along this journey that the professional standards and ability of the lawyers involved are high in both branches of the profession, and each has particular contributions they can make. Each has a part to play in achieving the ultimate business or public sector goal of the successful delivery of IT services, albeit sometimes in different ways and with some advantages as well as constraints driven by the business model they operate.