Rate Review Season and Legal Procurement
Looking forward to the jam-packed Buying Legal Council Conference in NYC on October 19th. Focus topics include data analytics, law firm rates and staffing trends, contracts management strategy, tech selection processes, the DEI journey, and of course the annual BLC Awards.
Ops in a Box, Legal Edition excels in the Procurement area with the following resources:
- Legal Billing Policy
- Rate Review/Submission Guidelines
- Terms of Engagement
- Vendor Scorecard Evaluation
- Model RFPs for
- Outside Counsel Matter/Project
- Technology Vendors
- RFP Capability Area Worksheet intended for legal tech sourcing
- RFP Scoring Sheet and
- RFP Evaluation Deck
The kit also includes information on matter budgets and alternative fee arrangements.
Why do I like this topic? Procurement is often the issue that galvanizes legal department leadership to staff the department's first legal ops role.
In my experience, Legal Procurement is closely aligned with but operates independently from the company's Strategic Procurement, and Information Security, teams.
To foster alignment, in legal procurement we use the company's templates and processes with adaptations appropriate to a legal market. We report out to Finance and Strategic Procurement the anticipated cost savings when we file a new contract with them.
Also we often collaborate with Strategic Procurement and co-project manage RFPs for business-facing providers in that interstitial space between legal services and everything else. Examples that come to mind include WCAG audit and Escheatment management providers.
For more posts on this topic, navigate to the Ops Spot and filter for legal procurement. And register for the conference! Hearst Ops Squad Sr. Manager and BLC Americas Board member, Jessica Williams, will be presenting and I'll be there to hear what's new and emerging in legal procurement.