Law is the original outsourced function. Yet the question of what gets in-sourced and what gets outsourced has really never been systematically addressed. Rather than focusing on meaningful measures of law firm productivity and efficiency, law departments have emphasized scrutinizing the bill. Five key questions can help your department get service that is more attuned to your company's competitive environment.
New technologies mean new legal issues. The authors spotlight five high-profile tech issues, and suggest some practical company policies.
Another process server. Someone else is suing your company. How tiresome. Let's see the complaint. Wait -isn't that our counsel who appears to be the plaintiff's counsel? Is that possible? Is it ethical? Here comes the head of litigation trotting in with their retainer letter-containing an advance waiver. Now you remember. The law firm did discuss this with you. But the question remains: Is it enforceable?
All employers have employees. Learn what preventative strategies work to prevent that multimillion-dollar HR case from being filed.
Litigation isn't cheap. But you don't want your company's multimillion-dollar lawsuit handled by Bob's Shoeshine and Legal Services. Your company needs the best legal representation it can afford. In the finale of his Lawyerland trilogy, the author explains the basic techniques of project management he now uses after experimenting with two cases and details how and when these techniques can fruitfully be applied to manage your company's litigation.
Two case studies of in-house counsel's efforts to use business techniques to productively and efficiently manage complex lawsuits while optimizing the use of limited financial resources in order to achieve the best result.
How many times have you reviewed outside counsel invoices in shock at just how much two firm lawyers can cost? Do you find yourself wondering, 'Why do things have to be this way, and can I do anything else to lower the bills?' In the first installment of this three-part series, the author examines what it is about law firm organization and culture that truly drives up costs, and lays the foundation for the tools to revamp your relationship with your outside counsel that are discussed in parts two and three.
Over the past decade, with the pressure to cut costs wherever possible, many legal departments continue to rely on a smaller core group of external firms to help achieve higher levels of business performance. Often termed 'convergence,' these and related strategies allow greater accountability for results and greater efficiency from dealing with fewer outside firms, particularly as each panel firm gets to know your organization better. As this trend continues, however, of the hidden problems of convergence is gradually beginning to emerge. Some companies beginning to find that even their preferred law firms' 'other' offices may fail to measure up the high standards of the main office with whom you had been used to dealing with and on which, in truth, your original selection process might mostly have concentrated.
Discusses the limits of what an attorney engaged in pending litigation may say to the media through Rule 3.6 of the Model Rules and legal or court-ordered limitations.
The data protection issues raised by outsourcing are important to
virtually every medium or large organization. Most have multiple service providers processing personal information on their behalfâ??a customerservice call center, a pensions/benefits administrator, a payroll administrator. And, an increasing number of organizations have at least some of their data processed offshore. The consequences of ignoring the related data protection issues are significant. It's not just reputational risks that are growing,
there are also legal exposures to fines and civil penalties. In this
article, the authors identify the most common data protection issues created by outsourcing and similar service provider arrangements, and suggest practical solutions for addressing them.