Doing more for less

Legal departments are under pressure to do more for less, but law firms are not responding innovatively to this challenge, a group of general counsel heard yesterday. Speaking at the event  - ‘How can GCs “right source” the legal services they need to deliver’,  the general counsel of BT Global Services, David Eveleigh  said that law firms did not approach him with innovative solutions  to service his needs unlike accountancy firms which were offering  a range of different options.
Law firms were also out of touch with the needs of their clients, in-house lawyers  felt. One general  counsel  attending said he was offered an assistant solicitor secondment from his law firm which would have cost in the range of £400,000 per year. He said he was prepared to pay salary plus a ten per cent management fee but no more than this.
The event, which was held in the Houses of Parliament in London and run in association with New Galexy, looked at how legal departments could manage their legal services better as well as discussing the findings of the GC Excellence survey.
“In recent years, risk management has featured increasingly strongly among the priorities of main board directors of large international businesses.  A great deal of what GCs now do involves risk management – so we spend increasing amounts of time working with GCs to support them in this developing area, in the context of the ever-present requirement on them to “do more for less”, said Robert Glennie, a director of NewGalexy.
If you would like a copy of the GC Excellence Survey, download here.