In-House Counsel

7 Tips For Outside Legal Resources

Outside legal partnerships continue to be critical to the success of an in-house department. Start building your rapport now.

By  
on

I recently conveyed these hard-learned lessons while being interviewed by LeftFoot legal podcast host, Nicole Giantonio. Whether you are law firm provider, outsourcing solution, or alternative legal provider, these tips will help make you more successful in your career.

Build Rapport and Gain Referrals

Referrals are important and powerful. As a law firm provider, outsourcing solution, or alternative legal provider, quickly develop rapport with your clients in a way that will make them have confidence in you. Developing a strong working relationship can help ensure that you are highly recommended by them to others. Technology is very important in any business and we are increasingly becoming open-minded. But some things such as referrals stay the same and they are still very important and powerful. Referrals definitely help color the relationship between you and your client. Tech or startup companies that are short on resources actively rely on outside resources such as stakeholders who are not lawyers. As general counsel or a law firm provider, you have to build trusting relationships and routinely educate these startups.

Help Us Define Quality

Even if you were referred, the client needs to have confidence in your services. At times, quality depends on what clients want, and you need to make sure that they are explicit and specific about quality. Clients need to pay increasingly more in margin for the project. Communication is very important, because clients may or may not need excellent quality or want to pay the high fees associated with that excellent quality for the matter in question. Open communication and specific attention to delivering the right level of quality at the right price will build confidence in your services.

Embrace Legal Tech

It’s an expectation that providers embrace technology — including law firms. It’s a good idea to evaluate the solutions that are right for your firm. Look for hardware and software that help you and your staff manage workloads effectively. Delivering more quality work in less time means better profit margins over time for both in-house and outside counsel.

Sponsored

Add Value

The inclusion of technology within legal services is providing added value to both the client and the firm. Embracing technology makes this possible and it quantifies success and service delivery. As an outside legal provider, consider being a specialist in service delivery and the measuring of outcomes in relation to resources utilized.

Measure

Providers should proactively quantify service delivery value for clients. This will enable you to communicate to clients what’s been done and how much effort has been involved in producing what’s occurred. It will also enable you to intelligently communicate with your clients, as well as their stakeholders, team leaders, board, and the CEO.

Know That We’ve Operationalized

Sponsored

Technology has greatly influenced legal departments and as a law firm provider, you need to be innovative. The efficiencies and improvements offered by legal tech create a more satisfying experience for the legal department and firm users. To assist with these resources law departments usually hire an operations specialist who reports directly to the general counsel. The role of the operations specialist ranges from measuring to managing budgets to negotiating with vendors collectively to being in charge of diversity initiatives. With the aid of technology such as electronic signature solutions and stock administration solutions, these operations and many others will be transformed and simplified.

Predictability Is Key

It may be a good idea to know that predictability is crucial and budgets have an inherent constraint. This, along with changing market conditions, have impacted how law firms are pricing their work. Hourly billing lacks precision and therefore should be avoided. Law firms need a good budget to execute a project well. They need to communicate with their clients about their budgets, and if they can’t work within the budget presented, they need to engage in the uncomfortable situation of saying so.

Outside legal partnerships continue to be critical to the success of an in-house department. In today’s market, successful partnerships (and referrals) begin and continue through rapport-building and open communication about quality and price. Embracing technology to add value and data to proactively communicate outcomes is becoming the norm versus the exception. In-house legal is operationalized and our stakeholders expect attention to budgets as well as risk. Tune in to our full discussion on the LeftFoot podcast Episode 89.

Olga V. Mack is an award-winning general counsel, operations professional, startup advisor, public speaker, adjunct professor at Berkeley Law, and entrepreneur. Olga founded the Women Serve on Boards movement that advocates for women to serve on corporate boards of Fortune 500 companies. Olga also co-founded SunLaw to prepare women in-house attorneys become general counsel and legal leaders and WISE to help women law firm partners become rainmakers. She embraces the current disruption to the legal profession. Olga loves this change and is dedicated to improving and shaping the future of law. She is convinced that the legal profession will emerge even stronger, more resilient, and inclusive than before. You can email Olga at olga@olgamack.com or follow her on Twitter @olgavmack.

Topics

, , , ,