Law Department Management

This Checklist addresses hiring outside counsel, outside counsel guidelines, applying legal project management principles to legal matters, insourcing and outsourcing legal work, analyzing matter outcomes, and terminating outside counsel.

Delivering service by the hour is old news. Everyone is familiar with flat fee structures and alternative fee arrangements, but are law firms ready to deliver a truly outsourced managed service? Effective managed service models create efficiencies within the in-house team through reliance on external counsel to be the first contact for the business, and then communicating to the in-house team valuable information about the deals handled by the law firm: trends in the contracts, frequently negotiated topics, business gaps, metrics about the workflow (how many contracts, from where, what types, etc.). Valuable business insight is in the hands of our external counsel, yet the client team rarely benefits from that knowledge. This advanced program will dive into the nuances of what makes a managed service in the industry of law services, and will review the unique benefits that clients glean from such a transformational model.

In your first week as the general counsel of a company, you just received information that you are now in a crisis. In this interactive session, members of the audience will play different roles within the company (members of the board, legal department, managers, etc.) to have a discussion, including: What type of crisis plan do you have, if any? What to do and how to formulate a plan of action? Who to call first, how to prioritize tasks, and where to prioritize resources? Who (internal and external players) to get involved and when to get them involved? What data is needed when a crisis hits? How to prepare for the media and when to reach out? How to communicate with customers, vendors and suppliers, regulatory agencies, and other parties?