Legal Mosaic Essays on Legal Delivery
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<str<strong>on</strong>g>Legal</str<strong>on</strong>g> <str<strong>on</strong>g>Mosaic</str<strong>on</strong>g>: <str<strong>on</strong>g>Essays</str<strong>on</strong>g> <strong>on</strong> <str<strong>on</strong>g>Legal</str<strong>on</strong>g> <strong>Delivery</strong><br />
alternative to law firms for certain tasks. Their DNA springs from this<br />
market need, and their structures, ec<strong>on</strong>omic models, and approaches<br />
to delivering legal services are fundamentally different than law firms.<br />
Service providers tend to be more client centric than law firms; they do not<br />
gauge success by profit-per-partner (PPP) because there are no partners.<br />
They have a corporate structure and- unlike law firms whose approach to<br />
legal delivery has remained largely static, service providers offer a seat at<br />
the management table for technologists and business experts as well as<br />
lawyers. This inter-disciplinary approach to legal delivery plus investment<br />
in technology and process has enabled them to steadily gain larger market<br />
share and to migrate up the complexity chain of outsourced tasks.<br />
In-house legal departments have also grown in size, influence, and,<br />
portfolios during the new millennium. Many of them bear striking<br />
structural and operati<strong>on</strong>al similarities to the law firms. And while many<br />
in-house departments have succeeded in reducing overall legal spendin<br />
part because they do not have a partnership model and typically possess<br />
superior knowledge of their clients’ business- they generally focus<br />
<strong>on</strong> reducing legal cost rather than innovating its delivery.<br />
Even so, corporate legal departments, not law firms, are, with legal<br />
service providers, driving change in the delivery of legal services. For<br />
example, many large corporate departments are segmenting buying decisi<strong>on</strong>s<br />
am<strong>on</strong>g the General Counsel, Chief <str<strong>on</strong>g>Legal</str<strong>on</strong>g> Operati<strong>on</strong>s officers,<br />
and Procurement Departments. And other, n<strong>on</strong>-legal silos within corporati<strong>on</strong>s-<br />
notably IT- are now involved in the vetting of legal suppliers.<br />
Engagement of legal services, <strong>on</strong>ce a cozy, relati<strong>on</strong>ship-driven process,<br />
has become a more disciplined, competitive, and value-driven <strong>on</strong>e reflective<br />
of the ever-expanding legal supply chain. Metrics are finding<br />
their way into buying decisi<strong>on</strong>s and supplier evaluati<strong>on</strong>. And while this<br />
process remains focused principally up<strong>on</strong> cost, it is <strong>on</strong>ly a matter of<br />
time before clients measure outcome too.<br />
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