Law Department Management

Cottage industry: lawyers who consult on compliance, corporate governance, and ethics

The whole topic of compliance, ethics, risk management and governance has attracted much attention and drawn consultants. Three of them known to me are Linda DiSantis of EthicsLINC, Rick Wolf of Lexakos, and Debra Sabatini Hennley of Compliance & Ethics Solutions. DiSantis has been a co-author on this blog.

Each of them offers significant experience from their days in corporate life and have now joined the ranks of consultants. Other consulting groups that provide advisory services in these broad areas undoubtedly have among their staff some former lawyers.

Expert witness sources

Law departments sometimes need to retain experts to testify on their behalf or to serve as fact experts. Fees of experts in major matters can reach into the hundreds of thousands of dollars.

I ran across a service that helps locate experts, Bench and Bar Experts, which inspired me to pull together the posts that I have written that concern experts ((See my post of May 17, 2006 on the expert witness industry and amounts paid them; April 23, 2007 on 16 resources to help find experts; Oct. 19, 2005 on patent expert witnesses and its reference to Exponent; March 20, 2007 on some superstar expert witnesses; May 21, 2006 on some questionable metrics about spending; March 20, 2007 on suspect data about disqualification motions; Jan. 20, 2006 and a fee audit’s findings; Jan. 10, 2006 and a bill auditor’s challenge to fees; and May 23, 2007 #2 on expert witnesses in international arbitrations.).

DataCert acquires Corprasoft – a competitor’s comment

By contributing author Brad Blickstein, Blickstein Group, on legal service providers:

I received a note from Rob Thomas of Serengeti Law yesterday, in reference to my post of May 10, "DataCert acquires Corprasoft." Rob pointed out that, like some other companies I mentioned, Serengeti has integrated matter management and e-billing. He made some other interesting points; here they are...

"I recently read your post discussing the DataCert acquisition of Corprasoft. You list other systems that have already integrated matter management and e-billing, but did not mention Serengeti. I wanted you to know that in recent surveys of both law departments and law firms, Serengeti is the most widely used system for matter management and e-billing in the legal profession. We currently have more than 10,000 in-house users on Serengeti, and all of their 12,000+ law firms, in 125 countries. There are more than 160 law departments on the system (more than double our nearest competitor), from some of the world's largest companies (American Express, Disney/ABC/ESPN, Nike, AlcatelLucent) to some with a solo in-house GC."

Circuit City promises prompt payment – can they do more?

By contributing author Brad Blickstein, Blickstein Group, on legal service providers:

As did many people (including Rees, who’s quoted in the article), I read with great interest the June 2007 Corporate Counsel article on Circuit City’s prompt payment plan, in which they outline their policy of requiring a 3% discount on all legal fees, based on the fact that they pay in 20 to 30 days.

It’s my guess that they’re still leaving money on the table, at least until they implement the e-billing program that they are “currently in the process of implementing.”

First, a legal assistant is reviewing each bill “line by line to make sure all charges comply with company guidelines.” Anyone who’s ever done this will tell you it’s mind-numbing work. I can almost guarantee that an automatic system would be more accurate, especially with the company-imposed pressure to work quickly. Moreover, the legal assistant and “the attorney responsible for the matter (who) is expected to give the bill a thorough going-over” are doing so at the expense of legal work. Any work the attorney is not doing while approving bills is going right back to the law firm–at an average cost of $343 per hour (per the latest Hildebrandt Law Department Spending Survey.)

Rees sums up nicely, “The real way to manage outside counsel costs is by what you ask a law firm to do and who does it–and how closely you watch both.” But an often-overlooked key is using efficient tools to do the watching.

Document Review: the next e-discovery?

By contributing author Brad Blickstein, Blickstein Group, on legal service providers:

Two interesting press releases crossed my desk last week, both related to non-traditional legal service providers offering document review services. EED appointed Terry Murphy, formerly of Kelly Law Registry, as VP of Review Services and Special Counsel added a “Turnkey Legal Center” in Chicago.

Document Review has traditionally been the domain of law firms, of course, but more and more different types of companies have been entering the space. It’s a logical move for both e-discovery companies–who already feed the data to the document reviewers and for staffing companies–who already provide many of the bodies. It makes sense for these types of companies to get involved in such a process- and people-intensive industry.

Most interesting to me, is that both of these companies seem to have concluded that outsourced document review can be handled cost-efficiently right here in the United States. (The EED release doesn’t come out and say that, but hiring from a U.S.-based staffing company at least implies this.)

My own opinion is that the next 10 years will find many different types of service providers fighting for review dollars, just like they’ve been fighting for e-discovery dollars for the last 10. Stay tuned.

Early case assessment

By contributing author Brad Blickstein, Blickstein Group, on legal service providers:

Often overlooked by those involved in electronic discovery is the fact that energy expended on it can often be detrimental to the case itself. A careful look at the results of a recent LexisNexis survey on early case assessment shows how.

The survey reports that respondents claimed that, on average, performing early case assessment results in a favorable outcome in 76% of cases–among other benefits. But 64% also said that time is the greatest barrier to performing an effective assessment. Respondents also listed the most important elements of early case assessment as: an initial review of case facts, collecting key documents, looking at case law, interviewing clients and creating a fact chronology.

For many law departments, the early days of a case are spent focusing on discovery: getting ready for a meet and confer (this has been exacerbated by the new FRCP), figuring out where data is, setting guidelines for what must be produced, reviewed, etc. While all of this is necessary, none of it is valuable. I urge corporations to spend time and energy now developing and implementing an ongoing, regular discovery process–after all, it is highly process-oriented work. Any good consultant or e-discovery provider can help with this. With that in place, the legal team can focus on the case earlier, and reap the many benefits of early case assessment.

General counsel in advertisements for law firms or service providers

Once I noticed one ad with on a testimonial of a general counsel, I spotted others everywhere. Here are a few of recent vintage:

An ad by Knobbe Martens Olson & Bear in Corp. Counsel, March 2007 at 41, quotes Matthew Fawcett of JDS Uniphase. The legal department of Concentra, a national healthcare company, shows up in a BottomLine Technologies case study. In an advertisement, Henry Schein, Inc. poses its law department for LawTrac Development Corp. (for example, InsideCounsel, May 2007 at 11). An attorney for American Airlines, not the general counsel, poses in front of an American jet on behalf of LexisNexis Martindale-Hubble (ABA J., Vol. 93, May 2007 at 3). The general counsel of New World Restaurant Group, Jill Sisson, appears in an ad for the US law firm Holme Roberts & Owen (InsideCounsel, May 2007 at 70).

I wonder what the law departments got in return?

RR Donnelley gets involved

By contributing author Brad Blickstein, Blickstein Group, on legal service providers:

Legal/financial printer RR Donnelley announced that it has partnered with Tursi Law Marketing Management to create the Women in Law Empowerment Forum, to “create a dialogue for women in law on fostering leadership in [the] workplace and community.” The press release says they have more than 350 registrants for the first program, scheduled for May 17 in New York City. The release also listed an advisory board with a dozen attorneys from top NY firms and companies, including Donnelley’s own general counsel, Sue Bettman.

It’s clear that Donnelley has hit the sweet spot with this. More than 350 attorneys will attend and look kindly on Donnelley. Their team will have the opportunity to spend time with a lot of powerful attorneys. All they had to give up in order to put together such an event? The willingness to talk directly about the company and its services.

Guidelines for outsourcing

By contributing author Brad Blickstein, Blickstein Group, on legal service providers:

Any law department considering outsourcing legal work overseas—and any vendor considering adding this to their slate of offerings—should check out “Guidelines for Outsourcing Growth” in the May 3, 2007 issue of National Law Journal, which discusses guidelines that have been issued by the LA County, City of New York and San Diego Bar Associations.

As is stated in the article and in the San Diego opinion, outsourcing of legal research and similar work is ok as long as local counsel (1) informs its client, if there’s a reasonable expectation that the work would be done by the firm itself, (2) supervise the outsourced work properly and (3) protect the client confidences and secrets.

Items 2 and 3 are worth paying attention to. Clients need to make sure there’s a mechanism to make sure overseas attorneys are not conflicted. Moreover, law firm attorneys are not exactly known for their management skills; it is important for clients to make sure that someone—either the firm or the vendor—is managing the project properly. Outsourcing vendors who have good processes in these areas should be able to make some headway by playing them up.

DataCert acquires Corprasoft

By contributing author Brad Blickstein, Blickstein Group, on legal service providers:

Electronic billing provider DataCert just announced its acquisition of matter management company Corprasoft. This deal should at least raise the eyebrows of many who follow law department technology—both companies are among the leaders and have been around for quite awhile.

What does it mean? Well, it furthers the consolidation of matter management and electronic billing. Lawtrac, TrialNet and CT Tymetrix have had integrated solutions for quite some time. Bridgeway and Mitratech have launched e-billing components within the past year or so.

For DataCert and Corprasoft customers, it’ll be interesting to see how well these companies integrate, as neither has ever been through a major acquisition (although DataCert did buy DigiContract in 2001) and the extent to which they feel pressure to change their upgrade path if they don’t currently use both these products.

For everyone else, it will be worth keeping an eye on the relationships between the electronic billing/matter management companies and each other, which may suffer now that they are also selling competing products. For example, how much trouble will it be in the future to integrate Bridgeway’s eCounsel matter management system with DataCert’s AIMS, as both sides would really prefer they got both ends of the deal? Same questions apply for any vendor with both products.

In general, however, this all makes sense. Electronic billing systems have provided law departments with outstanding ROI by automating processes and validating invoices, but have largely fallen down on providing the information they promise. It makes a lot of sense for electronic billing to function more as a component of matter management.