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here are days when in-house coun- sel must legitimately wonder whether they have become accountants and clerks, sifting through mountains of paperwork necessary to keep track of their dealings with outside counsel. In recent years, electronic legal spend management systems have
gained prominence as a way to deal with the document blizzard. The promises are compelling: a "paperless" way to collect and share data on spending, hours, and budg- ets as well as tracking of performance, better efficiency, and ultimately savings on legal spending. It all sounds very nice, but how does it work in the
real world? "You know exactly what is going on at all times and you get much better control for your costs," says Serge Reynaud, corporate vice president of human resources of Kruger Products in Toronto. "You get much better control of your legal spending and legal issues." Kruger Products, which uses a half-dozen outside
legal firms in Canada and the U.S., took the leap into electronic billing and file management three years ago when it purchased a system from Seattle-based Serengeti Law after comparing it with a couple of other compet- ing platforms. Because he is the sole member of Kruger Products' legal team and often travelling on the road, Reynaud has found the Internet-based system allows him instant access to any files regardless of his location. "Because we are a privately owned company, I get a lot of questions as to how much money we have spent thus far on certain files, I can have it right at my fingertips,"
INHOUSE FEBRUARY 2011 • 27
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