Bring More Clarity To Hiring Outside Counsel

Hiring outside counsel requires understanding of various factors, expertise and credibility of the lawyer against the litigation needs of the in-house counsel team. Often, hiring outside counsel and retaining them aligns with relationships. How long has a law firm been engaged with a legal department? Did a law firm partner get business because a new in-house lawyer worked with them in the past?

Hiring outside counsel for specialty matters or other legal issues can be challenging, especially when no one on the legal team has personal connections with the law firm or outside counsel. Referrals may work; however, even with a referral, research is needed to ensure a hiring decision is the right one.

Hiring Outside Counsel With Cutting-Edge Software

Innovative and cutting-edge software that features attorney success data powered by Lex Machina called Counsel Selector, helps legal departments identify and prioritize hiring outside counsel. The data-driven insights in the tool allow legal teams to search for litigators and partners based on various metrics that contribute to an overall evaluation score. Counsel Selector reduces the need for large-scale and time-intensive searches for new outside counsel and optimizes lawyer and law firm selection

Instant comparisons of prospective lawyers based on search criteria provide clarity in hiring decisions. The data-driven insights for which lawyers can be evaluated include the following metrics:

• Practice area and specialty
• Level of expertise
• Jurisdiction
• Litigation experience
• Number of cases litigated
• Case resolutions
• Findings and remedies
• Total damage awards

Counsel Selector makes hiring outside counsel less subjective and transforms how corporate legal departments select lawyers and their law firms. The data-driven insights of Lex Machina analytics contribute to informed decision-making in the legal department. These decisions, backed with powerful data, ensure the functionality of a highly strategic and mature legal department.

Added to the software suite delivered by LexisNexis CounselLink+, Counsel Selector rounds out a comprehensive legal operations platform that combines matter management, legal spend management, contract lifecycle management, financial management, and legal analytics capabilities.

Key Features Of Counsel Selector For Hiring Outside Counsel

Users of Counsel Selector benefit from several features that make hiring outside counsel more efficient and data-driven:

1. Comprehensive Comparisons: Users can conduct side-by-side comparisons of attorneys, gaining instant overviews of their track records in specific practice areas and jurisdictions.
2. Data-Driven Insights: The tool provides factual, data-based information to support the assignment of outside counsel, especially valuable in unfamiliar jurisdictions.
3. Seamless Integration: The Counsel Selector tool is integrated within the CounselLink interface, allowing users to access high-level information via icons on the Matter Overview and Law Firm search pages.
4. Expertise Mapping: The solution offers a clear understanding of attorneys' relative levels of expertise in litigating specific types of cases in various venues.

Legal departments with advanced maturity backed by data-informed decisions can direct choices for the department that add value to the enterprise. These choices run the gamut from hiring outside counsel and other vendors and implementing enterprise legal management software to optimizing the legal department, developing analytical reporting for leadership, cost-cutting strategies, and more.

Legal teams and legal operations professionals can instantly compare prospective outside counsel in a side-by-side comparison. Critical insights surface about lawyers' expertise and track records in specific practice areas and jurisdictions.

How Counsel Selector Works

Lex Machina scans millions of legal documents to create valuable analytics. These insights pertain to law firms, courts, judges, lawyers, and third-parties. Data compiled is so powerful that legal professionals can anticipate the outcome of various legal matters and their strategies. The data and insights are compiled into a blend of artificial intelligence information and lawyers’ reviews. This vendor management combination provides an edge for in-house lawyers and outside counsel to create winning litigation strategies. Contact us to learn more about hiring decisions with Counsel Selector or check out our business operations solutions.