Thursday, December 02, 2010

"Right-Sizing" Legal Services and Our Approach to Cross-Border Legal Practice

The legal profession in the US continues to struggle to find its way in the face of companies and capable in-house counsel who are taking firmer control of their legal needs and destinies.

The legal press has been abuzz in the last several months over the continued progress in "right-sizing" legal work, recognizing that fixed and alternative fee arrangements (no, not new, but now pursued with new-found urgency), legal process outsourcing form India (Thompson-Reuter's acquisition of Pangea3 is causing many skeptics to finally take serious notice), temporary lawyer services (in some cases delivered with increasing sophistication and marketing polish) and alternative law practices are part of a movement away from the traditional ways of doing legal business.

Welcome to our world, in our case by re-imagining how cross-border legal services can be delivered more effectively and efficiently. Not just since the beginning of this particular recession, but since our founding back in the mid-1990s.

In October, Hildebrandt Baker Robbins released a Law Department Survey of 252 companies in 23 industries that, as a Hildebrandt blogger describes it, "provides strong evidence of the economic drivers for the transformational changes rippling through the legal industry."

For example, favored in-house cost management techniques now include implementing alternative fee arrangements (by 76% of those surveyed), keeping more work in-house (by 69%), and using regional or boutique law firms (by 68% of those surveyed).

We have been strong believers in the need for change in the legal profession, and while our true secret sauce lies in our methodologies for delivering our senior, hands-on, more streamlined approach to solving cross-border legal issues, cost-effectiveness is an important outcome of our services.

And of course we hope to continue to be just that sort of "boutique" practice that is in increasing use by internationalizing companies!

1 comment:

John Smith said...

Hi,
What a comprehensive and interesting blog. will try to apply some of them in my practice.
Read more: Legal Transcriptionists