Hi Morgan,
At last week’s CLOC, I couldn’t have been more proud of our team who presented alongside UBS’s John Burke during our solutions lab: “Outtakes From Outside Counsel Management.” 🎬
Of course, the main attraction for the standing-room-only crowd (along with maybe our dayglow yellow PERSUIT attire 👷🏻 ) was the UBS story.
In a matter of months after taking over as Global Head of Outside Counsel Management, John took UBS’s legal spend from what his GC called “extremely high” (and maybe other things 🤔) to saving an average of 15-20% on outside counsel spend — a savings rate that has stayed consistent year-over-year.
All while gaining new strategic insights and improving their relationships with their firms.
What’s unique about UBS’s approach to OCM — and what we’ve incidentally seen with many of our other clients who are achieving big wins with their OCM programs — is this.
Top legal teams focus first on matter inception — the steps you take at the very beginning of a matter. 🤔
In the race to show savings on OC spend, many legal ops leaders decide to start with e-billing, matter management, and other steps that happen later in the outside counsel process.
But here’s the thing — it’s what you do at matter inception that dictates what you pay at the end.
That’s why UBS uses a smart sourcing framework at the inception of each matter.
Matters that can be handled in-house are kept in-house.
But those that can’t are sent through a decision tree to determine whether they meet thresholds that require them to be competitively sourced or submitted to an auction process.
By starting with matter inception, John’s team was able to quickly demonstrate ROI and get buy-in for their new OCM process.
Our team was so inspired by the UBS success story — and many others like it that we've witnessed in our work with enterprise legal teams — that we knew we had to get the word out. 📢
And finally, here it is. Our latest and dare I say the best guide by far that our team has created:
Establishing an Outside Counsel Management Program: How to Demonstrate ROI in the First 365 Days 📈
Today, John’s legal operations team has made good on their vision to become the leading in-house legal department within the financial services industry.
As evidence, their team now lays claim to both the 2021 Association of Corporate Counsel Value Champion Award and the Financial Times 2022 Europe Innovative Lawyers Award for Operational Efficiency.
Our guide — Establishing an Outside Counsel Management Program: How to Demonstrate ROI in the First 365 Days — is literally the blueprint that John’s team and others like his have used to successfully save millions on outside counsel spend and as a result, elevate the stature of their in-house team.
I hope you find it useful. And if you do, please let us know!
Cheers,
Jim
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