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An inducement to in-house counsel to evaluate outside counsel

Although it is useful for law department lawyers to evaluate the performance of the outside firms they manage, it often proves difficult to persuade them to complete the evaluations. At FMC Technologies, a lawyer can’t close a matter in the department’s matter management system without an evaluation of the matter’s outside counsel.

Thus, to get credit for finishing a matter, and to show reduced cycle time from open to close, the in-house lawyer has an incentive to complete outside counsel performance evaluations. This useful inducement comes from Counsel to Counsel, Nov. 2006 at 10.