It is often said that the challenge these days is to deliver more for less. That is certainly a challenge for general counsel and their legal departments. This week the Gazette reported that GCs are continuing to shrink their law firm panels as they bring more work in-house and “after three years of steady increases, internal legal spend levels reached a 14-year high. The problem is that “the task of managing law firms is an unwieldy, and labour- and time-intensive process” said Michael Rynowecer of the BTI Consulting Group.
The problem, all too often, with outside legal counsel is that costs are difficult to control and the direction of the case can also be lost, leading to decisions being taken which do not accord with GCs’ commercial goals. Better control and more efficient budgeting can often be gained by keeping the case in-house and flexibly increasing the size of the department during the period of need.