Canadian Lawyer - sample

November/December 2017

The most widely read magazine for Canadian lawyers

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w w w . C A N A D I A N L a w y e r m a g . c o m N O V E M B E R / D E C E M B E R 2 0 1 7 23 no longer part of the professional development in the firm, says Peters. "It's a richer experience for the lawyers we're hiring and great alternatives for people who are looking for different career paths for those who want more flexibility and taking jobs as one may have time." He sees it as positive for the profession, as well as the individ- ual lawyers and the firms, which are constantly pressed to find efficiencies. The challenge, however, was managing the process and the dozens of contract lawyers working on the firm's files at any one time. McCarthy's found something of a symbiotic relationship building its legal contract outsourcing in to its legal project management process, which had been implemented a few years earlier. Project management conversations, Peters says, naturally lead to efficiencies and the inclusion of outside lawyers. McCarthy's team involves project managers, technologists who can leverage and build out technology and quality control lawyers. That team, and the process and experience it has built, can then be used by the clients, freeing them from having to develop it themselves. Peters believes it's important to combine efficient, high-value service for the client. Managing his network of 20 lawyers was also an issue for François Sauvageau's Sauvageau & Associates, which special- izes in the recovery of debt out of offices in Quebec and Ontario. Outside lawyers are used primarily for court appearances in communities across the country. "We tend to handle the skilled process internally, in a centralized location," he says. "It's only when court appearance is necessary that we will contract with a local lawyer to assist us with the progress of matters." With four lawyers, five regular contract lawyers and 40 support staff, Sauvageau is building a national practice. He has been called to the bar in Ontario, Quebec, Alberta and British Columbia and, before year's end, will add Saskatchewan and Manitoba to that list, but he still relies on the knowledge and expertise of local lawyers. "But taking a case, which has [an] implication in a different jurisdiction, doesn't mean that we're comfortable handling the entire case, so that means a need to hire a local counsel as an expert or as a correspondent to attend court when required," he says. "The difficulty with this growing practice and growing tendency is the management of correspondents. A law firm like ours who find ourselves in the position of hiring many corres- pondents is dealing with the same problem that a large business would have when dealing with various external counsel." The challenge was finding a platform he liked specific to a litigation practice. He found there was nothing to safely control the litigation process once it's assigned to a partner using a consistent process. So he developed his own to manage external counsel called Nucleus. It allows his firm to assign accounts without having to shoot off numerous emails and documents, as well as gather national metrics along the way with relevant data all in one place. It is also designed to allow him to seek the approval of local counsel automatically. The result, he says, is a more efficient practice, which reduces cost and cuts down on unnecessary communication between the office and the correspondents. The idea behind the product, which is still in development but is being used internally, is to create a mini legal commun- ity connecting the firm to the client and external providers including lawyers, process servers and paralegals and provides them with the access they need without giving them the entire file. He expects to start marketing the product in about a year's time. The hope is that it will eventually connect with the court system as well. McCarthy's Peters believes that law firms are behind other industries in contracting out work and looking at the other industries, and that there's still room to build and manoeuvre. "The good news is we're an industry behind many others, so we have great examples around us to show us what the examples look like so there's advantage to a slow-to-adopt industry to leverage what we can and not make the same mistakes." WE ARE BUSINESS PARTNERS WITH LAW FIRMS PROVIDING A SOLUTION TO THEIR END CLIENTS THAT INCREASES REVENUE POTENTIAL AND BUSINESS WINS WITHOUT GIVING UP CLIENT RELATIONSHIPS. MARISA ELLIS, Robert Half Legal When you are looking for specialized legal counsel, turn to the resource that showcases peer-ranked Canadian legal talent. lexpert.ca/directory LAWYER ntitled-2 1 2017-11-06 10:52 AM

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