Bring More Clarity To Hiring Outside Counsel

Summary

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. In this blog, we'll look at a new tool from Lex Machina®, called Counsel Selector, that enables side-by-side comparisons of outside counsel to help in the best hiring decisions. 

Hiring Outside Counsel With Cutting-Edge Software

Lex Machina announced Counsel Selector to deliver innovative and cutting-edge software featuring attorney success data. Legal operations professionals charged with identifying and prioritizing the hiring of outside counsel rarely have access to applications that help make decisions. 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. 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.

Counsel Selector Complements LexisNexis CounselLink+ Vendor Management

LexisNexis CounselLink+ is a cloud-based enterprise legal management solution. It features various applications, including matter management, contract management, financials, work management and analytics, along with vendor management. As a legal operations hub, CounselLink+ unifies workflow in a single dashboard for everyone to engage. 

CounselLink+ is powered by AI. LexisNexis Protege in CounselLink+ delivers matter summarization and invoice review, all within enterprise legal management workflow. Vendors, typically law firms and other outside counsel, can access the hub and communicate directly with the in-house legal team about matters and contracts. They can also upload invoices in the financial management application and have them monitored by CounselLink SmartReview®. This AI-powered tool flags invoice errors and automatically corrects them. Legal departments with multiple outside counsel benefit greatly from the robust nature of CounselLink+. 

That's why Counsel Selector is a good complement to CounselLink+ vendor management. 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.

Reach CounselLink+ to set up a demo of Counsel Selector. 

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 - Legal operations 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 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.

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.

TL;DR

The LexisNexis suite of companies and products provides legal departments and law firms with extensive resources. For legal operations in the law department, Lex Machina announced Counsel Selector, an application that assists in making the best outside counsel hiring decision. Legal departments equipped with the CounselLink+ enterprise legal management solution, can easily implement Counsel Selector into the vendor management application featured in CounselLink+.