MARCH 2016
28
INHOUSE
ONTARIO REPORT
is helping with.
Davis has been at McMaster eight years
and there are three lawyers in the depart-
ment that was formalized in June 2014.
Much of what they do is focused on what
the health science and other faculties do
and around a lot of the entrepreneurship
funding from the province. "There is lots
of work there about trying to maximize the
return to the community on some of the in-
vestments they make on the research side to
make sure the intellectual property created
in the university does make its way back out
to help the wider society," he says.
Figuring out how best to source exter-
nal legal services continues to challenge
in-house counsel, but many, like Davis, are
turning to their procurement departments
to help with the process and narrow the ros-
ter while at the same time keeping a balance
between big law and local providers.
When Davis created the offi ce of legal
services, he went through a procurement
process with help from procurement
services at McMaster. "We created a request
for proposal and had 33 law fi rms that
responded," he says. "We had the grading
criteria, and eventually through a robust
process, narrowed it down to fi ve. So we
have fi ve external law fi rms that have their
own area of specialty that provide services
to us. We wanted a mix of large and small
and we wanted representation from the
local fi rms. Out of the 33, we had seven
Hamilton law fi rms that bid on work. We
defi nitely wanted a mix — we have a large
Toronto fi rm, a local Hamilton fi rm."
Davis says all of the fi rms that bid were
"creative and fl exible" in offering a variety
of different alternative-fee models — some-
thing he asked for in the RFP. "Some things
are going to be open-ended and they won't
be able to give us fi rm quotes, while some
work they might see over and over again
they should be able to give us a fi rm quote
on and a range. That's worked pretty well
— it gives us more of an insight into fore-
casting what legal services might be for a
particular matter."
IH
We created a request
for proposal and
had 33 law fi rms
that responded.
BRENT DAVIS
McMaster University
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