The Informed Purchaser

Becoming
the
Informed
Purchaser

“Our lawyers don’t seem to understand that I have to report to the Board, and I do not look good when every month the legal costs are beyond budget. They don’t seem to have any plan for the matter and just react to whatever is happening.”

In today’s world of complex transactions and litigation, a major challenge for in-house counsel is to control large legal matters to achieve an optimal outcome whilst ensuring legal costs are proportionate to ROI. An often overlooked impact of such matters is the involvement of key business personnel and management.

One of the most powerful cost control measures is the use of project management techniques, early case assessment and strategic case planning. This results in not only demonstrable cost savings, but reductions in the impact on your people and the business. Better commercial outcomes are achieved at an earlier time as the techniques are focused on aligning outcome with expectation and identifying early opportunities to finalise matters.

The use of decision trees starkly highlights the options and what are optimal outcomes, taking into account likelihood of outcome, possible consequences and costs and are particularly useful in formulating a clear report to the business for the purpose of decision making.

Our extensive experience in matter management enables us to work with your lawyers to prepare a realistic project plan, with clear deliverables, time frames and detailed budget, acceptable to both client and lawyer. This plan enables you to make decisions about your legal spend, analyse options, evaluate risk, develop a strategy, and assign internal resources. Continuous monitoring of progress against the plan ensures early identification of issues and provides the opportunity to change strategy.

In other words, you look at the Big Picture, and are proactive rather than reactive – you gain back control.