While already effective at negotiating OCG agreements with its clients, the firm was looking for ways to ensure greater efficiencies, especially when it comes to maintaining multi client, multi year, multi departmental compliance with its client negotiated terms. We proceeded to identify all internal stakeholders who will be involved in an assessment, gaps analysis and requirements phase (such as office of GC, Chief Knowledge Officer, risk and intake leads, IT, security, billing, marketing and others). We then searched for and identified 3 leading consulting firms with deep relevant experience, conducted a rapid RFP process, and helped the firm negotiate final engagement terms with the selected consultancy.

Once selected, we helped define the initiatives phases - facilitate and guide the consulting vendor - while ensuring that internal stakeholders were fully engaged, and that any key decisions made along the way were made in a timely and effective manner. In other words, building consensus where it mattered, but reaching rapid decisions from the firm's leadership when needed in order to move the initiative forward.

Once business processes where clearly defined, a terms management system was selected and implemented capable of ingesting and logically outlining engagement letters, guidelines and terms. ON a client or engagement level. The process of reviewing terms was automated through workflows, making it possible for different departments (e.g. finance, IT/security, risk etc.) to review terms and in turn provide the firm's GC and client responsible partners a simplified path to finalize negotiations with the client. This reduces the time it takes to engage with a client, and increases compliance with client commitments across the firm’s relevant operational functions.

The firm's home grown ethical wall system and processes withstood the test of time admirably. An innovative solution a decade ago, switching over to an advanced industry accepted platform made sense. The new platform offered clear advantages, such as integration with standard back office systems, a more favorable total cost of ownership and feature rich functionality that's constantly updated by the vendor. That said - since it touches so many of the firm's business processes and systems (e.g. document management, time management, accounting and etc.), this swap had to be done seamlessly and with very little impact on end users or interconnected systems.

This was also an opportunity for the firm to revisit some of its existing ethical walls processes and verify its integration across across relevant procedures that were not in place years ago. We helped coordinate this effort across many of the firm's functional areas, extensively leveraged its IT team and their deep know how, engaged with the vendor, helped select an integration vendor, and worked very closely with the firm's risk management team, as well as the firm's GC, placing emphasis on exposure and regulatory conditions. A year long effort culminated in a highly organized switch over from legacy to a new platform and related processes which was largely seamless and one that affected mostly operational staff, not the firm's lawyers.

Electronic billing (e-Billing) is now a common method for client billing and payment processing.
e-Billing platforms can interface with a host of electronic payment systems, with the firm's accounting system, allow high volume e-bills processing, do so efficiently using limited billing resources and with high degree of visibility into the firm's receivables. Our client asked for help managing a "soft RFP" process with the two dominant vendors in the legal space: Aderant's BillBlast and Thomson Reuters eBillingHub - both of which are advanced cloud based SAAS solutions and are bundled with implementation services . We

focused on making sure that:

1. Both vendors are fully engaged and are given the opportunity to put forward their best proposal - without any preconceived assumptions on the client side - but only on merit and fit

2. Identify a baseline of requirements (including security requirements*) in order to qualify platform functionality and integration specifics

3. Help negotiate and facilitate licensing agreements, implementation costs (SOW), and related security addendum

We worked closely with the firm's stakeholders: CFO, CIO, Billing Manager and the firm's counsel to ensure all their concerns are addressed, helping to bring the vendor's stakeholders in the right time: account management, product management, CIO and security specialists as well as counsel - to ensure the final agreement meets the firm's process and efficiency goals, cost management, and risk tolerance - while ensuring the vendors are on-side and ready to delve into details as needed.

* Security requirements - especially for cloud based SAAS solutions is becoming even more crucial - especially since law firms have committed to their clients' exacting security demands through formal outside counsel guidelines agreements