Beyond a Service Level Agreement (SLA) to a Legal Exposure Plan

The law department of Carillion develops an annual Legal Exposure Plan for each of its major client groups. As described in Ann Page and Richard Trapp, Managing External Legal Resources (ICSA 2007) at 16, the plan covers multiple ways “to bring our working relationships with our client businesses closer, covering in detail how we would bring the legal strategy to life…” Among the eight ways listed are “training and development”, “know-how,” “risk management,” and “precedents.”

The Plans appear to be ambitiously broad and to go beyond a typical service level agreement (See my post of May 14, 2005: standards of service; July 9, 2007: example of Koch Industries; March 23, 2008: service level agreement spells out response times; June 28, 2006: “client profiles”; Jan. 21, 2009: value-indicator checklist is similar to SLA; and Feb. 14, 2009: demand management at Royal Bank of Canada.).