Five additions to the 16 initiatives to save costs on external counsel ranked by effectiveness

The Second Annual Law Department Operations Survey at 9 lists 16 initiatives that respondents, all administrators in large US legal departments, ranked by effectiveness. The list is solid. It covers techniques that any legal department can put into action to reduce outside counsel expenses and I have written or will write several posts about them.

Meanwhile, some of the methods to reduce external spend that are not on the list include

Budgets;
Chargeback of fees to clients;
Knowledge management (including document assembly and checklists)
Offshore firms (LPO); and
Temps and contract lawyers.

I mention these additional techniques not as a criticism in any way of the survey. To the contrary, the survey asked about established, well-founded techniques for cost management. My purpose is merely to supplement the list and perhaps urge the survey organizers to consider some additional choices in the third annual survey.