Legal Business White Papers

7 Tips to Manage Your Legal Spend

Fri, 12 Feb 2010 13:07:00 -0400

Recent surveys reveal that the second greatest challenge faced by corporate law departments is controlling their budgets, with a large part of the struggle attributed to spending on outside counsel. With increasing demand for legal services, rising law firm fees, and stagnant budgets, corporate law departments are under pressure to do more with less. Growing concerns over compliance issues have also resulted in the need for greater transparency into legal spending, liability exposure, and aligning results with value.

How can you get a better handle on your legal spending and find the right balance between your budget and the company's legal needs? These tips offer you some initial steps to help improve the way you manage your law department spending.

Surviving Disasters: Questions and Considerations for Law Firms Preparing Business Continuity Plans

Fri, 12 Feb 2010 12:58:00 -0400

What if you couldn't gain access to your office for the next week ... or month? Sounds simplistic, but these are fundamental questions law firms must address. A range of possible disasters-from the obscure, like computer viruses, burst pipes and downed power lines, to the page-one natural (and man-made) disasters such as a bomb, fire, flood, tornado, hurricane or earthquake-can immobilize your firm, causing loss of revenue-generating clients to competitors who are prepared. The time you have to respond to a disaster ranges from only minutes to days.

Your Business Continuity plans can be ready to execute long before you need them. This paper can help. Knowing the right direction often begins with asking the right questions. To that end, this paper compiles the fundamental questions firm management must ask and answer in order to develop a successful Business Continuity plan that protects the firm's most important assets-its human capital, its revenue-generating clients

E-Billing Primer

Thu, 11 Feb 2010 13:00:00 -0400

Since the arrival of the desktop computer, companies have anticipated the paperless offi ce. For corporate law departments, the emergence of e-billing solutions has helped reduce the amount of paper flowing through the organization.

The "For Services Rendered" bills of the past have evolved into detailed itemized bills. But reviewers can quickly get lost in the details with more legal work than ever going to outside law firms and invoices that contain dozens or even hundreds of entries. Most company resources lack the time to thoroughly and consistently review invoices, so often the invoices are only superficially reviewed before they are approved.

E-billing systems were developed to automate and streamline the invoice review process, catching billing errors and saving companies time and money through the process. Early systems did little more than provide an electronic (or scanned) version of the invoice for routing and approval. Today's systems are much

Marketing Your Firm’s Legal Services During an Economic Decline

jenniferking@placeholder.com (Jennifer E. King) — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 14:09:00 -0400

Times are tough for the U.S. economy. Even if your law firm hasn't experienced a decline in business, you've undoubtedly heard about other businesses that are taking a hit. Some law firms have laid off attorneys. Partners are taking pay cuts. Other firms want to merge in an attempt to save themselves. The depressed economy isn't just affecting the large law firms; small firms and sole practitioners are also experiencing declining revenue as a result of the weakening economy. It's not surprising, then, that many firms are reexamining their budgets to decide where they can trim expenses if or when their own business takes a hit.

The marketing budget is one expense that many law firms will consider reducing or eliminating entirely in the time of cutbacks. But studies have shown that this is the wrong move. An economic decline actually offers new opportunities and advantages for firms that embrace smart marketing opportunities. Rather than cutting their

The Digital Bridge: Linking courts and law firms electronically and the evolution of the File & Serve judicial solution

Wed, 27 Jan 2010 13:08:00 -0400

Technology is transforming the courts.

It has been said that technology has made the world a smaller place to live. That paradigm applies to the relationship between courts and law firms as well. Recent advances have created the opportunity to literally construct a digital bridge between attorneys and the courthouse.

Technology continues to find its way into every corner of the judicial system. In courtrooms, judges sit with laptop computers at the bench, attorneys use presentation software to support their arguments, and juries view video screens from the jury box.1 Electronic court records are quickly replacing the overflowing boxes of paper that once filled file rooms. Great efforts are also underway to make sure electronic records can be exchanged between various court and law enforcement systems.

At the same time, the vast majority of courts in the United States and around the world still rely on paper. Paper remains the primary method for exchanging

Solving Law Firm Diversity Tracking with E-billing Technology

markclark@placeholder.com (Mary B. Clark) — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 14:12:00 -0400

Today, the issue of diversity is a key consideration for corporate attorneys who engage outside law firms to represent their companies. Many companies have enterprise-wide diversity initiatives, but even when this is not the case, law departments have focused attention on including the perspectives of women, minorities and various ethnicities in providing legal services to their enterprises.

In 1999, the Association of Corporate Counsel (ACC) led the way toward greater inclusiveness by inviting Chief Legal Offi cers to execute a statement of commitment to diversity in the legal profession. Roughly 500 corporate law departments are signatories to Diversity in the Workplace – A Statement of Principle, which calls on law fi rms to promote diversity internally1. In October 2004, ACC endorsed a Call to Action2 to reaffi rm this commitment with the goal that legal departments and law firms would come to reflect the diversity of the communities in which they exist. Both corporate