A domestic financial services company was conducting an enterprise-wide cost reduction initiative focused on outside counsel sourcing procedures and a targeted reduction in legal expenditures. The in-house team historically sourced work to a network of over 200 law firms based on geographic location, with few checks and balances to ensure the right work went to the right firm at the appropriate price. 

Our team was engaged by the General Counsel to reassess the law department’s sourcing strategy and identify cost savings opportunities. As part of this effort, we performed the following:

• Analyzed $180 million of historic law firm invoice data to understand spend and staffing trends
• Assessed alignment to industry standard billing practices
• Identified opportunities to shift routine, low risk work
• Provided recommendations on a consolidated panel of regional counsel with negotiated volume discounts
• Developed negotiation packets including spend analysis dashboards, qualitative performance feedback on key matters and timekeepers, and alternative pricing structure examples

Our analysis positioned the company to realize a 10% reduction in outside counsel spend, and provided an implementation blue print for developing more robust outside counsel management procedures, including adherence to best practice billing guidelines, implementation of volume discounts, use of detailed UTBMS billing task codes, and outsourcing of discovery tasks to lower-cost vendors.

Note: This work was performed prior to joining Stout.