Custom Client Service Solutions

I don't get the Value Index "fuss"

2009-11-04T16:38:00.005-05:00

So, as part of its Value Challenge the Association of Corporate counsel launches a Value Index wherein inside counsel give a one-star to five-star evaluation of outside counsel on six criteria:

-Understands Objectives/Expectations
-Legal Expertise
-Efficiency/Process Management
-Responsiveness/Communication
-Predictable Cost/Budgeting Skills
-Results Delivered/Execution

The individual evaluations will be available to ACC members, but not to law firms. Rather, the ACC will share aggregated information with law firms once a critical mass of evaluations are in place to make them statistically meaningful. It is this "secrecy" element that seems to be raising all the hackles among outside law firms and many of their consultants.

Thus, a vigorous (and unproductive) debate has emerged about the validity of the Value Index, its methodology, its fairness, etc. sounds like a lot of whining to me. Everyone in every law firm everywhere should have known for a long time now that inside counsel vigorously and sometimes brutally share information about outside counsel in list-servs and other media. I am glad that the ACC has decided to channel their commentary in six consistent evaluation categories. Knowing exactly how they will be judged, law firms should, it seems to me, quit complaining and get to work on activities that will measurable improve performance in all of them. Look at the categories, folks. As service organizations, law firms should have doing this stuff with or without the Value Index. Let's move on.

- Steve

Helping Law Firms Be More Efficient

2009-11-03T11:12:00.003-05:00

A recent article in law360.com points to Womble Carlyle's innovation of creating the profession's first sales department eight years ago. The article mentions the fact that buyers of legal services must know and have relationships the lawyers who will serve them. I totally agree. In every sale on which I've assisted, our lawyer always has played the leading role in the sale. But, in my experience, nonlawyer sales forces greatly enhance the efficiency of law firms by handling many of the tasks of sales that do not necessarily require the personal attention of the lawyer -- targeting, initiating contact with inside counsel to arrange meetings, preparing focused research, co-conducting interviews, guiding follow-up of meetings, and helping lawyers maintain and advance relationships after initial meetings. Often, clients and potential clients develop relationships with nonlawyer salespeople (who add value by bringing an additional set of business skills) AND the lawyers who ultimately will handle the legal work. It is not mutually exclusive, and in fact it most often is mutually productive for both types of relationships to co-exist. This sharing of tasks during often-lengthy and complex sales cycles allows lawyers to concentrate most of their time on the most important sales tool of all -- great lawyering and great client service!

- Steve

Thoughts on FMC Technologies' Litigation Law Value Challenge

2009-10-01T12:21:00.003-04:00

After an innovative "non-competition" to support the legal needs of FMC Technologies, Womble Carlyle was one of 6 firms empaneled as part of the company's Litigation Law Value Challenge.

The highly public "non-competiton" was initiated through the vision of FMCTI's Chief Legal Officer Jeff Carr and his team as part of the company's leadership in the Association of Corporate Counsel's Value Challenge, a now-familiar effort for inside and outside counsel to drive new, value-focused business modeling. The words, below, comprise comments that I originally posted on Legal OnRamp -- a forum for more than 10,000 individual thought-leaders in the legal services arena:

"Thanks to the team at FMC Technologies for materially advancing the Value discussion over the course of the spring, summer, fall and into the future. Naturally, Womble Carlyle is gratified to be in the position it is so that the work can continue. Aside from the Litigation Law Value Challenge at FMC Technologies, some thoughts about the pathway ahead:

A colleague of mine at Womble Carlyle is working with a panel of in-house counsel for a Value Challenge session at the upcoming ACC Annual Meeting in Boston. Until 6 months ago himself a Chief Legal Officer at a publicly traded company, he is struck by the intensity (one might say, ferocity) of efforts on the part of in-house counsel to drive improvements -- a.k.a. (r)evolution -- on the part of law firms.

I'm one voice, but I think that the stars are aligned for this to happen. I've said it before, and I repeat it now: Buyers of legal services always have been in charge. Now, they know it and are claiming their birthright.

Also coming clearly into focus -- new-model law firms. As one who works in a fairly large law firm (550 or so lawyers), I have observed that mid-sized firms typically have focused their competitive instincts primarily if not exclusively on the highly successful and profitable large law firms (i.e. New York firms, International firms, etc.) The market now presents a wake up call in the form of nimble, new-age providers whose voices are increasingly prominent. Some of us know that, to the extent we once did so, we no longer can view the competitive landscape only through the windshield. Increasingly, we need to be watching out the back window, not to mention the side ones and the moon roof. These new-model organizations, in conjunction with in-house leaders, also are responsible for accelerating the pace of change/improvement.

Long ago in my career, at Price Waterhouse before the combination with Coopers & Lybrand, the firm would agonize when it failed to win a competition to become statutory auditor. "How could they not select THE blue-chip audit?" the partners would agonize. The answer, sometimes at least, was simple: The potential customer did not want (nor want to pay for) a blue-chip audit when another approach would suffice and be more economically feasible. Customers knew what the auditors did not: the blue-chip level of effort was not always commensurate with the need. In other words, the provider just didn't "get" the need in all of its detail and relief. One size did not fit all. Clearly there were times when only blue-chip would suffice. But not always, and maybe not even most of the time.

One other point: FMC Technologies' operation of the Litigation Law Value Challenge on Legal OnRamp and Twitter has driven us to a new level. As one whose favorite album -- Rubber Soul -- was on a vinyl LP, having another LBR (legitimate business reason) to get in touch with my digital self makes the transition a bit less painful."

- Steve

What's Important Now

2009-09-02T08:22:00.004-04:00

What's important to buyers of legal services? Well....lots. In a long career of dissecting the attributes of law firms through the lens of buyers, Michael Rynowecer, President of BTI Consulting, speaks to17 attributes, ranging from "meets technical specifications" to "quality offerings" to "breadth of services." But of these 17, Rynowecer says, the four that truly create client allegiance are:

Commitment to help
Provides value for the dollar
Client focus, and
Understands the client's business

September marks the advent of a new business season. As we enter this season, all providers of legal services need to consider -- at every intersection with clients -- how they are delivering on these clearly stated client needs/wants. Addressing them robustly and fiercely is how lawyers and law firms not only deliver distincitive legal services but also create value and totally engaged clients.

Can we talk? Questions that need to be asked.....and answered

2009-08-31T16:32:00.003-04:00

As Joan Rivers used to say: "Can we talk?"

Amidst the madness of 2009, clarity is in order. Much needed in the chaos is total understanding between the buyers of legal services and those who provide them. But how often do we really get to "ground truth?" The title of of Susan Scott's outstanding book tells us what we need now: "Fierce Conversations." See www.fierceinc.com/index.php?page=reviews

My colleague, Pam Rothenberg, managing member of Womble Carlyle's Washington, DC office has created a list of questions that we hope will propel us. It'll take courage to have fierce conversations using questions like these, but what do we have to lose?

How are we doing in terms of the service we provide for you? Are the current projects we are doing with you just okay or WOW? Or, are we doing a half-baked job? Are we listening to your concerns? Do you “love us”…or merely “like us”…or, heaven forbid, “dislike us’?”

Is the service we provide, the result we achieve for you worth paying for? If so, why? If not, why not – how can we make it right, and then improve?

What is your impression about how our firm is perceived generally by buyers of legal services?

We have known you for awhile and would like to earn the right to provide you with a greater scope of legal services. Is there something holding you back from working with us? What specifically might we bring to the table in terms of substantive expertise or approach to legal service delivery (such as creative pricing, more effective client service teams or greater investment in you on an off-the-clock basis) that would incent you to buy more legal services from us? Is there any insurmountable obstacle that prevents you from working with us or expanding your work with us?

To what extent do you feel you can be safe if you buy legal services from us? In other words, have we established a basis for your trust? Do you feel secure in making a buying decision in favor of us? If so, what specifically influences you to do so? If not, what holds you back? How can we more earn more of your trust?

When you are facing a high impact problem personally or for your business, how can we best play a role in serving you and helping you to solve that problem?

When you realize that you are going to turn outside for assistance, what is your thought process as you consider law firms? To what extent am I and this firm on your list of firms to consider? What can I/we do to be at the top of your mind when a legal need arises?

How comfortable would you feel in calling me/us for help with ANY challenge you face, focusing here on needs that distinctly are NOT legal in nature?

What is the best means for us to engage with you to develop an ongoing understanding of your business and the challenges you face? How do we get our head in your game in the least intrusive manner for you (i.e., hanging out in your office; weekly meetings/call; offsite monthly meetings)?

We are driven to provide you extraordinary legal services. Our goal is to always give you a “WOW” experience. We want you to feel comfortable saying that you “can’t imagine a world without your firm?” What would that world specifically look like to you? How do we customize our service delivery to you so that it has the greatest impact and is the most responsive to your needs? What other law firms provide you with this “WOW” experience and what specifically are they doing to have this impact on you?

How do you think that the law firm industry is changing? How do you think it should change? How can we change to better serve you?

What type of investments can we be making in you and our relationship with you that would be most valuable to you? How can we best demonstrate to you that we cherish you?

The answers to these questions are the foundation for true Custom Client Service Solutions.

Can we talk?

2009-08-31T10:31:00.002-04:00

New PWC commercial says a lot about what needs to happen in these turbulent times. Listen to our clients. Now more than ever. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tr71wJXdzpQ

Great Questions

2009-07-10T13:57:00.002-04:00

As one who has studied the teachings of Mark Maraia and as one who tries to help lawyers advance their careers, I can't help but admire the list of client questions that Mark proposes in his new book, Relationships Are Everything: http://www.markmaraia.com/rae_home.htm

- What do you like about how we handled that last deal/lawsuit/project?

- Is there anything you want us to do differently next time?

- How easy is it to do business with our firm?

- If a colleague of yours called asking for a reference, what would you say to him or her about us?

- Who from the team would you like to see more of or less of?

- How well are we doing at keeping up with your business and industry?

- During the past year, what's one of the most impressive things you've seen an outside professional do for you or your company?

These are the right questions. Beyond all the clutter of dicussions about alternative pricing, alternative business models, etc., these questions get down to the preeminent question of the day in the profession: "What is Value?"

- Steve Bell

The Secret Sauce - Law Firms, Spaghetti Sauce and Consumer Choice

2009-06-19T08:03:00.007-04:00

An influential inside counsel and friend wrote to me this morning to say that Womble Carlyle reminds him of Prego spaghetti sauce.

A puzzling way to start the day, no doubt, until he went on to explain that he had just viewed a short video of "The Tipping Point" and "Blink" author Malcolm Gladwell extolling one of his heroes, Howard Moscowitz.

Moscowitz is a marketing consultant who, among many strokes of genius, transformed the spaghetti sauce industry in the 1980s by helping Prego to understand that consumers want not just one sauce, which at the time was how Ragu had achieved dominance, but many sauces. As a result of Moscowitz's work, today consumers have a universe of spaghetti sauce styles ranging from traditional, to extra chunky, mushroom and garlic, marinara, roasted garlic herb, 3 cheese, Italian sausage and garlic, and scores of others -- each one perfect for some consumer somewhere.

In the video, Gladwell explains that the paternalism of the spaghetti sauce industry in the 1970s led to the notion that there was one perfect sauce, which, he explains ignores the diversity of humanity and the individual tastes of consumers. By "horizontally segmenting" the market (i.e. giving consumers choice), Moscowitz and Prego revolutionized the spaghetti sauce industry, delighted customers and prospererd.

In telling me that Womble Carlyle is like Prego, my inside-counsel colleague is delivering a supreme compliment, for he is contending that Womble Carlyle has listened to and heard the messages of legal services buyers -- messages delivered in earnest of late in the ACC's Value Challenge. With more than 1,400 people -- some lawyers, some businesspeople of other sorts, all devoted to client delight -- we have the capacity to create not just one universal standard of great service, but an infinite number of standards of great service, each tailored to the unique wants and needs of each buyer. In other words, Custom Client Service Solutions.

I consider being compared to Prego a great compliment, and exactly what our firm's leadership has been talking about when they say that the practice of law has been permanently transformed, and that Womble Carlyle will lead the way by becoming truly the law firm of the future.

A shout out to MyShingle.com which is the source of the story that led my inside-counsel colleague to tell me that Womble Carlyle is a Prego-esque law firm.

- Steve Bell

Real World Value Challenge Example

2009-06-18T14:29:00.004-04:00

For the past few months, we have been speaking about Womble Carlyle's support of the Association of Corporate Counsel's Value Challenge initiative and our desire to maintain a leadership position in design of new models of practicing and pricing. As a reminder, the goal of the Value Challenge is to more closely align the price and value of legal services delivered by outside counsel. This blog, Custom Client Service Solutions, is intended to discuss the issues surrounding Value Challenge and how law firms in general, and Womble Carlyle in particular, are responding. Necessarily, much of the Value Challenge discussion to date has been foundational and theoretical, but real-world examples are starting to emerge, including this one from our own stable:

A client faced class action litigation involving massive legal costs—up to $2 million in document production alone. Womble Carlyle attorney Dean Rutley called an in-house contact at the company and recommended the firm's highly leveraged farm-source document review program, as well as the firm's highly technological Case Management Facility as ways to control these document production prices.

Womble Carlyle offered to do the entire document production project for a $850,000 fixed fee, guaranteed. A competing firm proposed an estimated $1.4 million price tag for the same work, with no assurances that the final bill wouldn’t be higher. As part of our pricing scenario, we also recommended, and the client accepted, a $200,000 performance bonus, to be awarded completely at the client’s discretion. These suggestions, gave the company cost-certainty and represent a true partnering with the client. The profit derived from this work will be a function of our expertise in managing it. Better law firm management, of course, is one of the objectives inside counsel wish to achieve as part of the Value Challenge.

Lessons from the Airport. WWGD? (What would Grady do?)

2009-06-12T09:21:00.003-04:00

This is not your normal air passenger rant, so buckle your seat belts, replace your tray tables and prepare for takeoff.

On Tuesday just past, eleven and a half hours after arriving at Reagan Airport, and seven and a half hours after buckling myself into a Canada Regional Jet for a 45-minute air journey from DC to Greensboro, the technological miracle of air travel was once again underway. At cruising altitude, a nearly full moon created chiaroscuro cumulus towers – the remnants of mighty storms – as though they were 100-story servings of silver and black cotton candy. To the east, perhaps 50 miles, an indescribable light show was underway as lightning ignited within the mighty, departing storm. Had I not endured the 11 ½ hour horror show, I would not have witnessed this amazing and rare natural extravaganza, and I truly am thankful that I had the opportunity to do so.

A maintenance delay had caused a 1:45 p.m. departure time to slip until 4 p.m., at which point I and 37 other passengers buckled in. By then the inexorable forces of summertime in the Atlantic seaboard had brewed up a wave of thunderstorms extending from Philadelphia southwest at least to Mississippi. Only after the trailing edge of this line of storms had crept eastward past Greensboro did the technological divinity named ATC deign permission to depart.

Perhaps in all the world, only a group of people traveling to the Piedmont Triad of North Carolina could have been as composed and gracious through such an ordeal as were my fellow travelers. With shadows of the Air France disaster in our minds, we all knew that we could not fly a plane not in perfect mechanical condition. And even though the mechanical delay put us into meteorological hell, we also understood we could not take on a 700-mile band of thunderstorms. So, for 7 1/2 hours, a truly amazing flight attendant performed miracles via shadow puppetry, the creation of “fake mimosas” by mixing orange juice and ginger ale, and any other number of ingenious distractions. I think we all understood the problems and – since most of us had no choice but to be in Greensboro in the morning – we all were willing to risk that the plane eventually would depart. And ultimately, at 11:35 p.m., it did, making the flight in about 35, not 45, minutes.

As I witnessed, from 21,000 feet above the earth, the miraculous tableau, I vowed to write about this experience in the context of legal client service, so here goes: During the 7 ½ hours we sat on the plane, the people who were really in charge of “the engagement” – the pilots – communicated with the clients/passengers only a few times, despite passengers imploring the flight attendant to have them say something. Here is the summary of the pilot communications:

1. shortly after boarding, the standard preflight announcement
2. after one hour on board, an announcement, generally, of the weather problem with no prediction as to what it would mean
3. five hours into the ordeal, an announcement of the need for refueling and a restatement of the weather challenge, once again, with no prediction as to the meaning, although at this time the pilot did voice a commitment to “get this plane down to Greensboro”
4. six hours into the ordeal, an announcement that a flight path had been discovered and that the plane would move to the runway.
5. 90 minutes after reaching the runway, a confession that the pilots had not wanted to break the bad news that the flight path had been closed again, along with a statement that the pilots were working hard and begging ATC to create an alternative path.

That’s about it.

How about an hourly report that the unfortunate situation had not changed? How about an explanation of communications with controllers and a summary of attempts to find alternative routes? How about a report on the stalling out of the eastward movement of the weather system? How about an explanation that sometimes, oftentimes, summer storms diminish in the evening hours as the earth’s surface cools? How about an explanation of how late the flight could take off and how late it could land? Even a modicum of communication of this sort could have calmed our nerves and enabled educated decisions on our part about whether to sit it out or demand that a shuttle bus come out to the tarmac and rescue us. Communication would not have changed the facts, but it would have provided a foundation on which we clients could reconcile those facts with our own circumstances.

As a business person in a law firm, I obviously don’t provide legal services to clients, but I do know that many companies and executives are engaged with law firms only when mechanical problems and storms are afoot. As a result of my experience, I think I’m going to remind the lawyers I work most closely about the importance of great communication with people who are under stress. One of the lions and legends at Womble Carlyle, Grady Barnhill, is known as a master at this, and I have heard many stories about how he has intelligently and understandingly communicated with clients and even their spouses and children about upcoming legal ordeals. I know that he has carefully instructed additional generations of litigators in the importance of this point. So, I’ll not be educating -- just reminding -- my lawyer colleagues of lessons that Grady has been teaching for decades: As lawyers steer their planes/engagements through storms, they need to be sure to keep clients/passengers continually apprised of developments – good, bad, or nonexistent. Like the passengers on US Airways Flight 3987, law firm clients will benefit from, and value, a regular stream of explanations from those who are in the front of the plane. We would have preferred a Grady Barnhill in the pilot seat that night.

Many pathways to greatness for lawyer-salespeople

2009-06-03T09:52:00.010-04:00

What are essential characteristics of successful professional services sales people?

That's a question that I, as one of the longest tenured nonlawyer salespeople in the profession, am supposed to help address on the "sales" panel at LSSO Raindance www.legalsales.org/raindance/ later this week. It's also a question that I grapple with frequently in my role as adviser to lawyers, who are both the product and the sales force at law firms.

Other LSSO panelists who also will tackle the issue are Patrick Fuller from Thomson Reuters, Tim Corcoran from Altman Weill and Robert Randolph from Bryan Cave.

Thanks to some brilliant education I have received from The Gallup Organization www.gallup.com/consulting I know there is no one right answer. As Gallup teaches, every person "goes to life" with her or his own individualized array of human strengths. Gallup has identified a total of 34 human strengths, or talents. From a very young age, we come to rely on our top 5 or 10, and we repeatedly and unconsciously put these top talents to work in every aspect of our lives, including sales, if that is the task set before us.

There is, of course, a stereotype of salespeople as gregarious, and, indeed, some of the most outstanding professional services sales people I have known are rich in the Gallup strength WOO -- "winning others over." Other, equally effective sales people are highly reserved, and they, perhaps embued with the Gallup strength known as "deliberative," achieve their sales objectives via thought and careful execution of well-planned steps. Still other great salespeople may have an abundance of the "strategic" strength theme and thus be able to chart many courses, depending on the circumstances and obstacles related to a particular sales objective.

The point here is that there is no one perfect set of attributes for a lawyer or a salesperson. This is an incredibly powerful realization for some of the lawyers I coach, and it empowers and engages them when they learn that making sales will not require them to project a persona that is just not them, rather, sales demands that they operate in their own unique zone of strengths.

However, no matter which strengths a lawyer has, one task is critical: listening. If an individual cannot find within her or his strengths the ability to listen and understand, very few buyers will stick around long enough to make the purchase. After all, the buyers of professional services are much too sophisticated to be "sold" anything. A much more productive approach is to work hard to understand and address THEIR strengths, so that when they get ready to buy, they know where to turn.

For a broader discusssion of Gallup's insights into strengths, check out the website above, or read any of the organization's strengths-oriented writings. One of my favorites, and the one that got me interested in a strengths-based approach to work, is "First Break All The Rules."

- Steve Bell

Value at Both Ends: It Ain't Necessarily the Price

2009-06-01T08:44:00.004-04:00

Many in the legal blogosphere are aware of the innotive FMC Technologies Litigation Law Value Challenge, which was promoted on Legal OnRamp: http://tinyurl.com/l7vpow. The challenge, whose responses were due yesterday, is well-described on law.com: http://tinyurl.com/q8by2o

Womble Carlyle was one of, no doubt, scores of law firms that that authored a response to FMC Technologies' request for information about that which "truly and substantially distinguishes your firm from other firms in terms of providing value." The exercise caused us to consider again the value-oriented principles that we espouse with our Custom Client Service Solutions. The FMC Technologies RFP and response was one of three recent experiences that have re-awakened me to the manifestation of value in the real world. Here are the others:

During the American Lawyer's Law Firm Business Development Conference on May 20 (http://tinyurl.com/lxhopl), I had the occasion to visit with prospective clients at lunch at Del Fresco's restaurant in midtown Manhattan. With a Rockefeller Center address, Del Fresco's is, you can be sure, on the pricey side, but a waiter named Nathan (he never did mention his last name) made sure our party got a great corner table where we could have a reasonably private conversation, did not get annoyed when our orders were modest (in-house counsel DO notice abject gluttony, after all!), and - in general - took great care of us. Nathan's attentiveness and understanding that we also needed "space" ensured that my partners and I and our guests had a pleasant lunch and, more importantly, a solid conversation. At the end of lunch, Nathan asked for business cards, indicating he wanted to contact us about upcoming offers. I was the only one who actually turned in a business card. This morning, I got a handwritten note from Nathan thanking us for coming to Del Frisco's and indicating he looked forward to seeing us again. High price, high value.

Another value anecdote: As the food-supply maven in our family, I was tasked yesterday with stocking up, so with some trepidation about what could be an unpleasant experience, I drove to the local not-too-many-frills grocery store -- Shopper's Food Warehouse. As I checked out, the cashier (wish I had taken care to get his name), noticed that in between the bulk purchases was evidence of a Sunday afternoon outdoor meal. "Do you enjoy to cook out?" he asked cheerfully, before launching a few other interested-but-not-intrusive questions. The prices for groceries at this store are in my experience a lot lower than at other stores in Fairfax County, and one anticipates a bit of customer-service hardship in exchange for the bargains. My cashier is, I am sure, paid the going rate of grocery store cashiers, which cannot be making him rich. But, as he handed me the receipt and wished me "Have a good barbeque!" he clearly was recognizing me not as another carbon life form behind an overly full grocery cart, but as a human being. Low price, high value.

As I contemplate how best to deliver value to our clients and clients-to-be, I will think about Nathan and the now-anonymous clerk at the discount grocer. As a large and established full-service firm with a diversity of legal and business resources for our clients, Womble Carlyle has the ability to deliver rocket-science law at a high price and high value. We also have the ability to deliver commodity law at a low price and high value. The market needs both....and everything in between. It's up to us to understand with great precision what a particular client needs and wants -- and then deliver it, just as two sellers who recently crossed my path did with me.

-Steve Bell

Alternative Pricing of Legal Services - another benefit of companies moving to Mid-Atlantic and Southeast U.S.

2009-05-29T08:44:00.003-04:00

There's a reason I lift, in toto, the Hugh Hewitt townhall.com blog below: All of the companies listed below (and others not listed)found a progressive, mid-sized law firm willing to deliver superlative legal expertise on an alternative pricing basis, namely Womble Carlyle Sandridge & Rice PLLC, www.wcsr.com. In helping such companies discover the pro-business Southeast and Mid-Atlantic, we truly are delivering Custom Client Service Solutions.

Steve Bell

The blog post and link to which I refer:

"Wednesday, May 27, 2009
The Future of California Is Moving To North Carolina
Posted by: Hugh Hewitt at 8:52 AM

This story should be placed on every legislator's desk in Sacramento, and a stack of copies carried around Arnold's office. Key graphs:

North Carolina lawmakers are pushing to give Apple Inc. a multi-million dollar tax break should the company bring an East Coast computer server farm to the state — an estimated $1 billion investment, according to a state official with knowledge of the recruitment efforts.

State and local governments offered Google an incentive package worth up to $260 million over 30 years, one of the largest incentives packages in state history, to land the data complex. If the Apple project also remained active for 30 years, its server farm could save more than $300 million on its corporate taxes, based on legislative staffers' estimates that the tax break would mean a savings of $3 million from 2011 to 2018, and then $12.5 million each year after that.

Google, Microsoft and other technology giants have responded to booming Internet use by building server farms: huge, climate-controlled computer warehouses that can store enormous amounts of information and process vast flows of data. They are heavy users of power and water and are usually spread over large spaces.

Though the Apple site is initially expected to employ fewer than 100 full-time workers, legislators said the potential prize was so juicy it justified changing the state's corporate tax formula to benefit a single company. North Carolina's unemployment rate remained at 10.8 percent in April, marking a third-straight month it was in the double-digits, the state Employment Security Commission reported Friday. Four non-urban counties have unemployment rates of more than 16 percent.

I have long wondered why northeastern Ohio with its well-developed industrial infrastructure and low-cost-but-high-quality standard of living with regards to housing, education and recreation (except having to watch Cleveland sports, oh Cavs) hasn't adopted North Carolina's strategy, but the Tar Heel State clearly gets it. California is bleeding out, and unless the sky-high tax rates come down quickly, the loss of economic vitality will accelerate."

http://hughhewitt.townhall.com/blog/g/81361459-607c-4dc9-a0a8-a25ecccefd5e

Strangers in a Strange Land: Law Firms and Web 2.0

2009-05-26T12:19:00.002-04:00

The steady emergence of a new class of legal-services buyers may drag the profession into the 21st century more rapidly than change-averse lawyers would arrive on their own.

At the American Lawyer's Law Firm Business Development Forum May 20-21 in New York City (http://tinyurl.com/cexnmu), some of the topics -- client teams, marketing department operations, even sales -- covered familiar territory.

For those listening carefully, however, two panels gave us a look into where we REALLY are as we near the end of the first decade of the new millenium.

The panel discussion -- The Promise of Web 2.0 and Social Networking -- was notable for two reasons. First, the backgrounds of two of the panelists: Fred Paulman is Managing Director of Law Firm and Legal Vendor Management at Pfizer, and Lynn Easterling is Senior Director of Worldwide Legal Operations Legal Services at Cisco. Their bios list skills such as "negotiation," "knowledge management," "evaluating outside counsel performance." We first encountered these types of skills in Judi Trail, who is a currently nonpracticing attorney and an executive in the highly advanced purchasing department at JPMorgan Chase. She has for a number of years overseen the purchase of legal, tax and advisory services there and who utilizes JMPC's incredibly well-tuned knowledge management system to identify outside counsel carefully matched to the facts and circumstances of any particular matter. The ascendance of this new class of sophisticated buyers and technologies is a very important, if not directly stated, message from the Forum. A second lesson is the fact that these very sophisticated buyers are adept and conversant in Web 2.0 tools and techniques, some of which -- including www.legalonramp.com, Martindale-Hubbard's Connected product, and Cisco's proprietary version of Legal OnRamp -- were on display. Suffice to say that for the most part the buying community is still years ahed of the selling one.

Also at the conference and on another panel -- Art of Pricing: The Connection Between Value & Cost -- was another sophisticated buyer, Mark Wolf, Assistant General Counsel at FMC Technologies, a company that is utilizing Legal OnRamp and other online tools to invite law firms to communicate value propositions to FMC Technologies, as explained in Rees Morrison's Law Department Management Blog: http://tinyurl.com/pz278k. Even as we listened to presentations at the Forum, a vigorous conversation about FMC Technologies' Value Challenge was being waged on the blogosphere. Wolf's presentation concluded with an hilarious WSJ cartoon, with a patient in earnest conference with his physician at the end of a medical exam. "Give it to me straight, Doc," the patient begs. "How many billable hours do I have left?"

A shameless plug: Many years ago, at a time when BigLaw saw 10% rate increases extending to and beyond the horizon, Womble Carlyle noted the increasing sophistication of buyers of legal services, and we understood then that the future of the law firm model was destined for a big shakeup, now hastened by the economic meltdown of the last 18 months. As a result of our scouting, more than 5 years ago, we took action by creating a program name Custom Client Service Solutions (http://tinyurl.com/owtd8q). Our program, including our own Client Compact, emerged just as the innovators at the Association of Corporate Counsel were unveiling the Value Challenge, www.acc.com/valuechallenge. The timing was perfect, and because of our innovation, we have become known as early adopter of, contributor to, and advocate for that program, which is defining the future of the inside counsel-outside counsel relationship.

It's not as though the world has completely changed....yet. Based on questions and comments from the audience, many law firms do not yet understand that the buyers not only are in control as they have been for a number of years, but also they now KNOW they are in control. They will dictate the actionin the days ahead. Thus, to me at this conference, the true innovations were somewhat buried like diamonds amidst more-traditional conversations. But for those with future-attuned eyes and ears, they were clearly on display at New York's Harvard Club last week.

Steve Bell

The Hourly Rate Trap

2009-05-18T09:00:00.004-04:00

The article, below, was written by Womble Carlyle litigator Press Millen and published in Incisive Media's law.com: http://tinyurl.com/pc6fg6

The Hourly Rate Trap
by Press Millen

Ask a lawyer what her hourly rate is and she’ll probably give you a dollar figure. Ask a client about his lawyer’s hourly rate and you may get a scowl. In fact, if you ask a client to describe his biggest complaint about his lawyer, don’t be surprised if he says it’s that hourly rate which is presumptively too high.

The imminent demise of the billable hour has been confidently predicted during the entirety of my nearly 25-year legal career. And yet, like Rasputin, no matter whether you try to stab it, shoot it, or poison it, the billable hour somehow manages to survive. This article deals with the hourly rate, one of the knottiest aspects of what appears to be an undying feature of the relationship between lawyers and their clients.

Bear with me while I recount a cautionary tale: In 2005, the Board of Directors of Hewlett-Packard was concerned about confidential board information leaking like a sieve to the media. H.P.’s “solution” to the problem was to hire private investigators who set about using a number of questionable techniques to investigate certain board members, employees, and even reporters. When the dust cleared, H.P’s Chairman had resigned, lawyers and others were indicted, a number of the principals were hauled before a Congressional committee, the SEC investigated, and the company paid a $14.5 million fine.

The real scandal, however, is that the plan was hatched with lawyers in the room.

How much would it have been worth to H.P. for one of its lawyers to say something like “Hey, before we do this, let’s make sure these investigators proceed in a lawful manner, because if they won’t (or can’t), we probably shouldn’t do it all?” Would that 30 seconds of advice have been worth it, even at $750 an hour? In retrospect, the lack of that advice ended up costing H.P. millions of dollars and even more in shattered lives, careers, and public opprobrium. H.P., no doubt, would have paid dearly for the counsel it never got.

That story is a microcosm of the fundamental problem with the billable hour: how do you measure the value of a lawyer’s time? And how do you measure the value of something bad that doesn’t happen? It’s also a stark example of why clients shouldn’t fall into the Hourly Rate Trap, i.e. allowing retention decisions to be guided principally by hourly rates. Here are five reasons why it’s a Trap:

1. It Ignores Arithmetic – at the most basic level, the hourly rate is just one factor in the complicated equation of how much a client ultimately pays. Until the rate is multiplied by some amount of time, it’s just an abstract number.

Here’s a concrete example: Lawyer A charges $500 an hour. Lawyer B is equally experienced, but charges 20% less, $400. The solution seems simple, hire Lawyer B and save 20% in legal fees. Lawyer B, though, has a problem. He can’t go anywhere or do anything without his associate, Lawyer C, carrying his bag. And Lawyer C charges $300 an hour. The client’s 20% savings just became a 40% change in the wrong direction.

Staffing, in other words, is likely to be a much larger factor in total cost than any lawyer’s hourly rate. Complaints from clients about “strangers” on bills are rife. “Who,” they ask, “is this lawyer and why is he working on my matter?”

Here, budgets are a necessary, but not sufficient, cure. In many industries, vendors bid low to get the work and then immediately set out to undermine or tear up the budget. That attitude has no place in the legal profession. A budget is something lawyers need to stand behind, quarter-by-quarter, not just use to obtain work.

2. It Ignores Knowledge – The arithmetic issue becomes more nuanced when the matter of knowledge is factored in. Imagine this issue: if your company files for an extension of time to answer a complaint, does it waive its right to seek dismissal for lack of personal jurisdiction? Associate A researches the issue and writes up the answer – “no waiver” – in an efficient half-hour charging your company $150. I charge $530 an hour, but I already know the answer to the question. My five seconds of time costs 74 cents.

Dozens, even hundreds, of similar examples could be provided. At some level, the lawyer charging $500 an hour should be more knowledgeable than the lawyer charging $250. Not only that, but the lawyer learned what he knows on someone else’s dime. That knowledge, as in the simple example of the extension, should benefit the client in a way that tangibly translates into a smaller bill.

Those savings (or additional costs) can be multiplied when the issue of “firm knowledge” is considered. Ideally, retention of a law firm entitles the client to the storehouse of knowledge of all of the firm’s lawyers. In practice, we all know that it doesn’t happen seamlessly. Nevertheless, a client should ask its law firm what it’s doing to facilitate the 74 cent answer in place of the $150 one.

The trendy name for this is “Knowledge Management.” In 1985, it meant hollering down the hallway to a colleague who might know the answer off the top of his head. That died out as law firms expanded to multiple floors (and then multiple cities). By 2000, it meant an email blasted out to the whole firm: “does anyone know anything about the FTC’s guidelines on therapeutic medical equipment joint ventures?” Yet a system that relies on volunteerism and lawyers paying attention to sporadic emails simply isn’t systematic enough.

In 2009, law firms need to demonstrate to clients that they have an accessible Knowledge Management system that allows lawyers to search the firm’s work product without relying on voluntary responses from possibly knowledgeable lawyers. As a practical matter, this means that a lawyer should almost never begin work for a client with a blank sheet of paper.

Here’s a simple example from my own practice. In 2007, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a decision, Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly, which overruled a 50 year-old precedent and tightened up pleading standards on motions to dismiss. At my firm, if a client needs to file a brief on a motion to dismiss, I can run a standard computer search on Twombly in Westlaw which, in addition to retrieving the usual Westlaw materials, will also allow me to access all of my firm’s work product citing the case. As a result, I can pick and choose from among other briefs already written and then edit according to the needs of my client’s particular case. Needless to say, that process is at least five times more efficient than having an associate start from scratch. Assuming my numbers are correct, the $500 an hour lawyer is one-third the cost of the $300 lawyer.

3. It Ignores Experience – This may be the dirty little secret of litigation in the 21st Century. Because of the limited number of trials, especially long-form trials of major business disputes, many lawyers have simply never had the bracing experience of standing up in front of a jury and saying “let me tell you about my client’s case.”

The problem is not that those inexperienced lawyers are incapable of trying a case. Instead, their lack of experience makes it difficult for them to foresee – during the lengthy course of litigation – how the case will culminate at trial.

This is where the additional costs come in. As a result of lack of experience with the thing itself – the jury trial – many lawyers are prone to engage in pre-trial tasks that have little bearing on that ultimate event. The costs are found in witnesses who are deposed but never testify, experts whose opinions are never provided to the court, and categories of documents reviewed – documents and documents – that never see the light of day in court.

To put it simply, there is a significant cost difference between the $300 an hour lawyer who takes 16 hours to prepare for and take a deposition that the $500 lawyer recognizes from experience doesn’t need to be taken at all: it’s $4,800 vs. zero.

Another problem in this area is found in what one of our client’s calls “science projects.” These are costly forays into largely academic questions that have little or no bearing on the outcome of a case. Experience allows a lawyer to separate the real issues from the academic ones.

Inexperienced lawyers, moreover, often fail to understand the client’s business objective. Clients just hate to hear a lawyer say he spent $100,000 defending a $50,000 case. Other times, however, a client would have preferred an intricately negotiated license agreement to an off-the-shelf one that doesn’t accomplish all of the client’s objectives. The experienced lawyer seeks to understand the client’s business objective and then knows how to accomplish it with the appropriate amount of legal resources. He also makes sure he knows when his client’s objectives change.

The ways experience – even at a higher hourly rate – can ultimately save a client money are nearly limitless. A lawyer who fails to properly supervise, for example, an e-discovery vendor can cost a client six figures in no time. An expert engaging in a “science project” can do the same. What does it profit a client if he gains a 10% hourly rate discount, only to lose $150,000 to an inefficient vendor?

4. It Ignores “Magic” – In this context, “magic” is shorthand for those small but critical things that sometimes happen in the course of a representation. A deal is about to crater, but a lawyer who knows a top executive makes a five minute call and puts things back on track. A lawyer whose credibility with the court is irreproachable stands up and successfully vouches for her client’s position. Everything is stalled until a lawyer who knows the right person in a bureaucracy reaches out and obtains the comfort necessary to proceed.

In every case, these magic moments are just that, moments. As such, they don’t lend themselves to being measured according to an hourly rate. That being said, though, clients want to maximize magic moments, and lawyers who can make magic moments, it stands to reason, tend to have higher hourly rates.

The question becomes, is the client willing to forgo the possibility of a magic moment in order to save some on the incremental hourly rate?

5. It Ignores Wisdom – The difference between wisdom, on the one hand, and knowledge and experience, on the other is not always so clear. A lawyer may have an encyclopedic knowledge of, say, the federal precedent on taxpayer standing, but have no idea how to present that knowledge to a judge in a way that doesn’t offend that judge’s deep feelings about access to courts and fundamental fairness. Another lawyer may have the experience of having tried 50 cases to verdict, but refuse to accept that the case he’s facing now can’t be handled just like those others.

And this is where wisdom comes in. A lawyer sitting in a Board meeting may have little knowledge of the specifics of the California law on surreptitious surveillance, and no experience of engaging private investigators, yet still be wise enough to say “let’s think this through before we do it.” That wisdom can’t be measured in hourly increments, but it’s almost priceless.

Press Millen is a trial lawyer with Womble Carlyle Sandridge & Rice, PLLC in Raleigh, North Carolina.

Copyright 2009, Pressly M. Millen

Thanks for "No" thing

2009-05-15T16:03:00.004-04:00

James Srodes's book review of 52 TRUTHS FOR WINNING AT BUSINESS WITHOUT LOSING YOUR SELF by Alan M. Webber (of Fast Company fame)contains the following statement, which is enough to make me want to read the entire book:

"Perhaps," the reviewer writes, "the most important rule for these perilous times is, 'Learn to take No as a question.' As he (Webber) says, 'The correct response to a no is 'thank you.' (Webber) adds, 'Take notes. If the person telling you no offers an explanation, listen carefully, listen respectfully, listen to everything he or she says - without agreeing or arguing. ... You may have come for money, but these words can be precious gold. You're getting something rare: honest feedback.'

"No" is not easy to hear for those of us with fragile egos who nonetheless provide professional services and who earn the opportunity to do so by "doing sales." While it's not easy to hear, "no" represents crystal clear communication between buyer and seller. Too often, buyers and sellers dance around the issues and just aren't straight with one another. Consequently, our worlds get wrapped up in "maybe's," which occupy our emotions and brain cells, and very often preclude us moving on to the next opportunity. As I have grown, ahem, more mature, I have come to appreciate a good solid "no" almost as much as a good solid "yes."

Here's a link to the review, found in today's Washington Times: http://tinyurl.com/pfhtz8

Drucker 1974 Quote Defines 2009 in Law firms

2009-05-14T10:39:00.003-04:00

This Drucker quote reminds me of today in the legal profession:

“It is the customer who determines what a business is…

What a business thinks it produces is not of first importance—especially not to the future of the business and to its success…What the customer thinks he or she is buying, what he or she considers value is decisive—it determines what a business is, what it produces, and whether it will prosper.

And what the customer buys and considers value is never a product. It is always utility, that is, what a product or service does for him. And what is value for the customer is…anything but obvious. The customer is the foundation of a business and keeps it in existence.”

MANAGEMENT
TASKS RESPONSIBILITIES PRACTICES
Peter Drucker, 1974

Yes or No. Short and Sweet. FMC RFP.

2009-05-11T15:20:00.008-04:00

Had a chance over the weekend to study the most recent information from FMC Technologies, asking law firms who might wish to become part of FMCTI's outside counsel network to submit a questionnaire. Check a few boxes and complete a short statement about the differentiation of the firm. Gotta love this approach. The Chief Legal Officer can say "tell us more" or "no thanks" quickly, as opposed to subjecting the law firm to a painful, time-consuming proposal exercise. Hope more inside counsel take this pathway. In sales, "no" is not a pleasant answer. But it is the second best answer (next to "yes") and it is vastly superior to the "maybe's" that occupy our brain cells and emotions and paralyze us. Following the Value Challenge clarion call, Jeff Carr and his team including Mark Wolf are to be applauded for their efforts to make the RFP exercise as efficient as they ask outside providers to be.

Clients Need To Win On Every Fee!

2009-05-07T13:56:00.005-04:00

Been absent from the blog for awhile -- accommodating all the changes in the legal profession resulting from the meltdown, which I track to September 15, 2008 or so.

Whatever else it has done, the meltdown seems to me to have made buyers of legal services more serious than they have been to date about evaluating the possibility of engaging firms other than CYA ones. We are more active than ever in discussing the array of possibilities with inside counsel and other legal buyers. I am proud of my partner Rob Fields, who, during a LegalBizDev - West LegalEdCenter webinar phrased it about as well as I have seen it phrased. This Fields' quote from the webinar, as reported by Jim Hackett (CEO of LegalBizDev): "....Some large firms are beginning to embrace this philosophy. According to Rob Fields from Womble Carlyle (over 500 lawyers), “The client needs to win on every fee, every time, even though at larger law firms, it’s difficult to wrap our minds around this.” He described a large project Womble Carlyle recently started in which the client can choose whether to pay by the hour or to pay one of several predetermined fixed fees. At the end of each matter, the client gets to pick the lowest price. Of course clients love this, but it imposes significant demands on the firm. “We have to manage our staff closely and focus our resources on what the client values.... It gives you incentive to focus.”

Read Jim Hasslett's Commentary here:
http://adverselling.typepad.com/how_law_firms_sell/2009/05/alternative-fees-part-12-whats-different-for-big-law.html

Steve Bell

Law Firms, Make Changes or Get out the Way!

2008-11-24T15:45:00.005-05:00

This post is in response to the American Bar Association's roundtable discussion: What Should You Do Now? A Roundtable Discussion on Law Practice in a Time of Great Economic Turmoil

Hundred fifty year old landmark financial institutions going out of business, others owned by taxpayers, Detroit on the rocks, two wars dragging on, stock market down, $700 billion in taxpayer money out the door and perhaps down the drain, stock markets halved, retirement plans decimated, bankruptcies on the upswing, new president with zero administrative experience, law firms closing doors, late-pay on the upswing, legacy clients closing doors. What, us panic?

I guess it's normal for commentators to advise "dont panic." But with all of these signs afoot, how can anyone working in a law firm not do so? Telling lawyers not to panic is like telling a defendant in a capital case to think positive. Just words. Lawyers everywhere are losing sleep, developing ulcers, and frenetically trying anything and everything to change the trajectory.

All the effort is not going to create a positive result unless we first recognize that just as the world has changed forever, the business of law has changed forever and the traditional law firm model is instantly obsolete. Fact one: except for the most crucial matters (where the billable hour will remain king), inside counsel will seek and easily find scores of alternatives to Big Law -- ranging from new-age law firms, contract lawyers, overseas outsourced lawyers, and more. These solutions are in place, and they will gain credence and market share instantly. Speedboat law firms offer a blended solution -- new, facile business models like the law firms 2.0 are offering combined with deep benches and expertise.

Even before the meltdown, The Association of Corporate Counsel's Value Challenge was a harbinger of the business model of the future. Before the meltdown, inside counsel and their first-cousins, the sourcing professionals, had established a significant intellectual leg up on the sellers (aka law firms) which have clung on to an ancient business model. The meltdown transports us instantly into an economic slowdown where capacity (lawyers in private practice) vastly exceeds demand. This is particularly true in transactional law, especially in the real estate sector. Law firms seeking to survive will have to make the changes that inside counsel have been demanding or get demolished by law firms who will make the changes.

Three forces that will drive legal practice are clear: legislators and administrators who will be driving new regulations and compliance; law enforcement, which eventually will seek to find and punish the errant who have wrought havoc with the world; and the plaintiffs bar, which will be capitalizing on whatever is available. As they design their new business models, law firms need to watch these segments for clues about the help that businesses will need....and then get there quickly with an efficient, affordable, scalable solution.

To the extent that panic brings about these changes, and quickly, maybe it really IS a strategy.

How many law firms are really making changes to reflect the new reality?

2008-11-19T10:49:00.008-05:00

Wonder how many in the legal profession have noticed that as of September 2008, the world is totally different than it was only a few months ago. How many law firms are really making changes to reflect the new reality?

In recent days, we have responded to two enormous RFPs with striking and novel alternative fee and alternative service approaches that are in tune with some of the premises of the Association of Corporate Counsel’s Value Challenge. Having listened closely over the last three or more years to the concerns of inside counsel like FMC’s Jeff Carr, Wal-Mart’s Miguel Rivera, and Clorox’s Laura Stein (not to mention sourcing professionals and nonlawyer buyers of legal services) we have redirected our approach to RFP responses to create alignment with buyers’ definition of value. Obviously, the baseline for us is providing high quality legal services; without that, we are nowhere. But now, after three or more years of continual internal dialogue about what value means to clients, some of our lawyers who are in charge of large accounts are enacting changes.

In one recent instance in one of our markets where we have far fewer lawyers than other firms, we competed with 14 other large “name-brand” firms to be the sole (or nearly sole) law firm for a publicly traded company with a legal spend of approximately $7 million. Prior to preparing our submission, we invested an incredible amount of effort understanding why the company was issuing an RFP at all – where had the incumbents not delivered value, and what really is of value to the company going forward. We nailed it, and as a result we are one of four finalists and the only nonincumbent still at the table. In another response to an RFP for a large organization that is an existing client, we proposed to provide tens of thousands of hours of legal service for a fixed fee. The inside lawyers were stunned that a law firm has matched its actions with its words about value. Hopefully, we will win both of these big gambles, but win or lose, the market is noticing, which is a big part of the game.

The key in both instances is absorbing our share of the risk, not expecting inside counsel to manage our affairs, and taking responsibility for our own efficiency. In these two instances, at least, the themes of Value Challenge have gotten the attention of the folks paying the legal bills.

More Evidence That Times Are A-Changin'

2008-11-13T13:57:00.005-05:00

In a previous posting, I mentioned the renewed focus of sourcing executives generally and the Institute for Supply Management in particular on the corporate legal spend. Sourcing executives represent a sometimes-overlooked constituency in discussions about the evolving relationship between inside and outside counsel, as manifested to a large degree in the Association of Corporate Counsel's Value Challenge.

In November's Docket, the journal of the Association of Corporate Counsel, Kenneth Cutshaw, the General Counsel of Cajun Operation Company points to another organization, whose rise is futher evidence of the legal profession's transformation. That organization is the nascent International LPO Association (ILPOA), scheduled to me up and running by the end of the year. LPO is the acronymn for Legal Process Outsourcing -- the much discussed flow of commoditized and repetitive legal work to other nations, including India and -- interestingly -- Ireland, Israel, Canada and other Eastern European countries now listing themselves as homes to LPOs.

Market forces have been slow to reach the legal profession, but as an individual who has studied it carefully for most of the last decade, there is a palpable acceleration, and all of the words about new law firm business models seem to be nearing reality.

Value: Some Folks Just Get it!

2008-11-12T14:53:00.006-05:00

Too often, those who drop in and out of the inside counsel-outside counsel discussion reduce it to a sound bite that centers on criticism of law firm fees. No doubt law firms are culpable, but the topic is a whole lot broader than that, and kudos to Susan Hackett, General Counsel at the Association of Corporate Counsel for continuing to focus on overall value, and not just prices. To her credit, she totally "gets it" that value is a two-way street. As an innovator at a law firm that is aggressively implementing alternative service and pricing models, I particularly appreciate her comment in the law.com article: "Lots of clients' lips are moving, but their feet aren't moving....People assume that we're pointing our fingers just at the firms. But we have the guns aimed at ourselves, too."

As I reflect on the current volume of high-level discourse on new business models, I can't help but reflect that for me all of this arose almost five years ago when I first met Judi Trail, who oversees the acquisition of audit, tax and legal services for JPMorgan Chase. When I first met Judi, I was amazed at the bank's sophistication in the realm of legal sourcing, which any student of the subject should get to know. When one considers the avalanche of legal services that will be purchased by the financial sector as a result of the financial crisis, one wonders how soon the legal-purchasing advances at JPMC and other large banks will become standard fare.

Which leads me to yet another observation. We don't always take note of the fact that another significant constituency -- the sourcing world -- is carrying on a related, but not yet connected, discussion of the legal services model. I refer you to a September article in the publication, Inside Supply Management, which is the house organ of the Institute of Supply Management. This organization is where the REAL purchasing experts congregate. The article to which I refer was authored by Jason Winmill, a partner with Argopoint Consulting LLC in Boston. As the author bio notes, his firm specializes in bringing a structured sourcing approach to corporate legal departments. Heads up to those involved in the legal services purchasing discussion. ISM is "onto us." Here are the introductory words from Winmill's article.

"Corporate legal spend offers one of the most challenging, but also rewarding, categories for corporate supply management departments. But sophisticated supply management professionals are making inroads into legal departments....."

Read and heed!

We Get It. Let US Move on.

2008-11-11T10:00:00.006-05:00

Pamela V. Rothenberg's response to the National Law Journal Article “Billing gets creative in souring economy”

All of this talk about the dead billable hour and alternative fee arrangements is starting to get boring. Maybe it is because I am an activator and just need to move on and get stuff done. Maybe it is because at my firm, Womble Carlyle Sandridge & Rice, we have been offering creative billing arrangements, including fee caps, flat fees, success fees, contingent fees, blended rates, shared risk arrangements, retainers and the like, for many years and all of this seems like old news to me. Perhaps it is because it feels like we are stating the obvious, to say the least, that clients are entitled to meaningful value for the legal fees they pay.

In any event, I am at the point (and so is my law firm) , especially given the continuing “financial crisis” and the impact that today’s severely difficult economic conditions is having on our clients and friends in the business community, of wanting to move on from just talking about all of this to actually engaging in meaningful action. (I think I may go and dig out from the bottom of my closet my old Nike T-shirt that reads: “Just Do It,” and start wearing it again.)

Let me expand on my thoughts. Those of us who are fortunate enough (especially at this horrible time) to work at well-managed, innovative, nimble and truly collaborative law firms really “get it.” We understand the rationality of our clients’ needs to have predictable legal budgets for their varying litigation, transactional, regulatory and government relations matters. We also fully comprehend that “value” is defined by more than just cost – it includes a wide array of non-monetary features that are inextricably associated with extraordinary legal service --- legal service that is in every respect designed, produced and delivered in a manner that is truly responsive to clients’ articulated and specific needs, preferences and business objectives.

So here is my challenge to all of the buyers of legal services that are out there clamoring for change – for improved pricing and service delivery approaches – for the creation of a new business model by the private law firm sector – please come sit down at the table with my Womble Carlyle colleagues and me and, as Susan Hackett and our other friends at ACC suggest, let’s build a better mousetrap. We will even treat you to lunch (and we won’t charge it through to you on our bill). We will bring with us only those colleagues that will truly add value to our discussion and we will let you know in advance every one that may show up at the lunch. We will not charge you for any first year associates in attendance (that we may decide to include for training purposes and so that they have a chance of developing into more responsive and client-connected lawyers). We will not try to make “new law” at the lunch.

We will simply roll up our sleeves, with a pencil and pad in hand, and actively listen to your needs. We will strive to develop with your input a customized client service solution, including predictable legal fee budgets, creative billing arrangements and other non-monetary components, that will result in our firm better enabling you to achieve your business objectives and successes.

We, at Womble Carlyle, promise to go above and beyond. We are fearless and creative about developing tactics that are responsive to your needs and that position us to deliver extraordinary and high value legal services. For those of you that are willing to embrace the change that you want to see in the legal profession – please join me and let’s “Just Do It.”

Pamela V. Rothenberg is Managing Member of Womble Carlyle's Washington, D.C. office.