Legal news and trends for Canadian in-house counsel and c-suite executives
Issue link: https://digital.canadianlawyermag.com/i/50875
INHOUSE: Over the past couple of years, how have you managed spend- ing? What has your experience been with law firms on value billing, alterna- tive fee arrangements, and discounts? GEORGIA SIEVWRIGHT: HP is definitely very cost-conscious when it comes to legal spend and there have been cutbacks over the last couple of years. There is a lot more account- ability in terms of where the spend is. We are definitely looking for ways to get more for less from the firms. At the same time, when we are dealing with firms, we need to still get the best quality, and that is kind of a challenge [in] making sure you are managing the cost, but getting the quality. Another trend is we are definitely looking for talent that can do more in-house, as opposed to outside. So in terms of recruiting new talent, we are looking for people who are able to often do what outside counsel might have done a few years ago, and keeping the capabilities and training in-house so we are able to do and manage that. KENNETH FREDEEN: I think that's key — having a group of lawyers who can do work that, otherwise, you might be forced to send out, and finding that balance between finding the expertise, externally, at the right price. I am not too fussed on price, quite frankly. I think if you get the best, you will pay those lawyers to do that work. But it is those lawyers in-house who will have value to the equation, in my view, man- aged properly. BARRY FISHER: My fundamental concern was not about the hourly rate, but rather the multiple that goes into that. I would prefer to have a $1,000- an-hour lawyer solve an issue within one hour, than have an $800-an-hour associate take three or four hours. So, ultimately the issue around cost is the ultimate matching of the result for the amount of money spent and being able to predict what happens throughout the year on our budgets. 18 • AUGUST 2011 SUE GAUDI: I absolutely agree with that. It's much more common for me to phone the most senior lawyer at the firm, for a three-minute conversation about something that I have already sort of determined what I think the answer is, to tell me if I am on the right track or not, than to just farm out the entire question to an associate at the firm. I think there is a huge value to in-house counsel who know what the business and strategic direction is and know the players in the company; they are much better placed to be able to at least come up with a theory as to how to answer a question, and then work with external counsel to get it right, than an associate who knows the law, but doesn't know anything about the company. FERNANDO GARCIA: On our end, I am the only lawyer in Canada, so I INHOUSE don't have the ability to do that dis- tribution within the place, but what I do is I leverage quite a bit with our American counterparts. We have 45 lawyers there, so we do quite a bit of that. We try to redefine the issues, try to narrow down the scope of what needs to be addressed, how Canada is different than somewhere else. We also use external counsel, where needed, but external counsel that we use have been with us for 25 years, some of them, so they have an intimate knowledge of the company, the issues, and so we are able to get quick answers and a lot of historical information to them, as well. So we try to leverage that. FRED KREBS: We've noted . . . there are a couple of things that go into this: The relationship between what you are paying and what you are actually get- ting, but also things like predictability. We are seeing, too, where there is a greater push to firms to be more pre- dictable and to set budgets and to try to actually live with the budgets because you have to live with your budgets, so trying to move the firms to do that. And then there is a whole line of things that might be done with respect to how you manage your department, and how you manage your legal spend and things in terms of relationships with the firms and what [the] firms themselves might do and how they might change their particular structure, and how you might force that sort of thing. FREDEEN: It is interesting how there is