The agreement will enable the lawyers to take their safety presentation, which features an animated film starring the firm’s own talking clock, with assistance from officials of the local authority.

DBS Law launched the road safety campaign for children in Birmingham in November last year. The lawyers and staff, who are used to dealing with the devastating aftermath of road accidents, have been spending some of their time educating youngsters in the city with an interactive presentation to get them thinking about staying safe while crossing the road.

The workshop has been to three schools so far and DBS Law hope to cover as many as 100 this year after gaining the endorsement of the council.

After having enjoyed years of autonomy in managing outside relationships and ever-growing budgets, corporate general counsel are facing austerity and cost-cutting edicts, forcing them to rationalise their spending, bring costs down, and increase efficiency.

Their activities are now increasingly on the radar of chief financial officers. Along with other service functions, corporate legal departments are required to do a great deal more, with less; they are being challenged to bring more transparency and predictability to their spending, and to make use of contractual arrangements that connect cost to value and risk, rather than concentrating merely on the traditional value standard of the billable hour.

Rethinking the mix

GCs are rethinking how they deliver legal services to their organisations, including considering the proper mix of internal and external staff and how to incorporate automation, process and project management. The less innovative law firms are being driven by GCs to reduce costs through discounts or alternative fee arrangements, while providing greater transparency on bills. Many GCs are insisting that their chosen law firms work with legal services outsourcers to provide cost-effective solutions to the legal projects.

The legal world is built on networks and personal rapport — and many GCs have embedded professional relationships with law firms and individual lawyers. The likelihood remains that lower rates cannot compete, in the minds of in-house counsel, against the value they see from advice delivered by trusted advisors. However, transparency, panel selection processes and on-line bidding are now commonplace — and what used to be known as the ‘old school network’ carries less weight than before.

Although some suggest there is a perceived danger of asking non-lawyers to evaluate the reputation and competence of lawyers, procurement specialists can help in-house counsel improve how they manage legal matters and outside counsel relationships. Procurement specialists are experts at clearly identifying value-for-money solutions.

Efficiency and predictability

Nevertheless, if procurement organisations want to be welcomed into a corporation’s law department, they have to do more than just offer to reduce law firm rates by threatening to move the work. To illustrate that they add value, procurement practitioners have to produce the knowledge and the tools to help shape fee arrangements that reward innovation, efficiency and predictability. This added value can also come in the form of looking beyond just law firms for solutions and service providers that can help GCs fulfil their overall objectives – delivering quality services within a budget that meets an organisation’s financial objectives.

Meanwhile, if law firms are to offer an attractive value proposition, effective resource management is going to be critical in creating client value, enhancing profitability and maintaining a competitive edge. Work needs to be planned, resourced and executed in a way that allows a law firm to find the right combination of team members and sector knowledge to maximise billable hours at lowest cost and achieve the best possible margin. Law firms, too, must look beyond their own internal resources for solutions for their clients.

Legal process outsourcing (LPO) providers can play a significant role in providing support to both GCs and law firms, in pursuit of enhanced value for their businesses.

A strategic and collaborative ecosystem is evolving whereby in-house counsel, law firms and LPO providers forge relationships to design solutions and shape a new model for the delivery of legal services. Neither LPO providers nor law firms alone can provide the holistic, end-to-end service that corporate clients require – it is difficult to imagine law firms maintaining the ongoing investment in process improvement and cutting-edge technologies required to sustain a new services delivery model.

Service integrators

However, under a collaborative model, law firms can work effectively together with LPO providers to expand their offerings to clients.

LPOs are well placed to play the role of service integrator and project manager, within the parameters of defined service level agreements, objective metrics, a governance structure and regular reporting. They can also provide valuable support and experience in unbundling a complex legal service, determining which pieces are suitable for outsourcing, and then to ensure that those tasks are performed well.

The pace of change remains unabated. But a thoughtful approach to collaborative legal services will result in significant cost savings and focus the in-house legal workforce on higher-value activities, while creating additional capacity for unanticipated legal needs.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority is stepping up its game in relation to the advice it is giving consumers of legal services.
Over the past year the regulator has taken a number of initiatives designed to help clients understand the legal minefield, following a survey carried out which revealed the public has little knowledge of their rights when consulting a lawyer.
The measures feature a host of information on a special consumer section of the SRA’s website.
They include videos describing different scenarios, including how to spot a bogus solicitor and when to contact the Legal Ombudsman and a downloadable leaflet entitled ‘What to expect when you use a solicitor’.
Also frequently refreshed alerts to provide information on bogus firms, high profile disciplinary actions such as closures and prosecution and a legal jargon-buster which aims to help consumers understand the legal process.
Mehrunnisa Lalani, SRA director, said: “There has been a lot of mystique over the years about what consumers should expect from legal services. We want to change this and are using collaborative approaches with organisations such as the third sector to get information across to consumers and get feedback on their experiences.”

This is according to partner at KPMG Lee Ayling, who explained the 2012 Legal Pulse survey revealed the top 30 companies in this sector claim to be “busier than they have ever been”.

The expert described how the reason for the increase in workload was said to be due to firms focusing on maintaining or expanding their outsource requirements.

Mr Ayling stated: “They are involved in supporting their clients on the renegotiation of outsource contracts or on the procurement of additional services that were going to be provided under an outsourced agreement.”

The current economic situation may have led to many organisations moving towards using third party providers rather than hiring additional staff to complete day-to-day tasks.

For example, payroll outsourcing may appeal to small firms that cannot afford to pay for a full-time employee to deal with this side of the business.

In a bid to stay afloat and survive the challenging economic market, some companies may cut back on their staff numbers and turn to outsourcing as a means of reducing expenditure.

Mr Ayling noted in some cases, businesses are looking to extend their contracts with third party providers, so even more tasks are dealt with by an outside company.

It was suggested this increase in scope is more likely to happen as organisations “become more comfortable with services delivered by an outsource provider”.

The specialist described how in many cases businesses dealing with outsourcing systems such as HR and payroll solutions will not be based in the UK or Europe.

Mr Ayling explained services can be delivered from as far away as India and this can influence whether a firm will opt to use a third party provider.

He commented that when organisations become “more comfortable with services being delivered in that model”, they are more likely to consider handing over more of their administrative tasks to outsourcing companies.

Martyn Hart, chairman at the National Outsourcing Association, recently claimed freelancers are one work sector that is bound to benefit substantially from paying another company to focus on day-to-day administrative tasks.

“Debt collecting and bookkeeping are not billable hours and time spent on these activities could be better spent delivering your saleable service,” he remarked.

It was suggested freelancers should focus on delivering their products and perfecting their skill, rather than reject work as they have to balance their accounts.

The Peer Monitor Index (PMI) measures the quarter-over-quarter change in the factors impacting law firm profitability, including billing rates, demand, productivity and expenses. Demand for law firms, as measured by hours billed, increased 1.5 percent over the same period a year ago. AmLaw 100 firms, experienced a similar increase in demand, while AmLaw 200 firms saw an overall increase of 2.3 percent, according to Peer Monitor.

Direct expenses for firms rose six percent, while overhead expenses grew 3.6 percent. Those higher costs can be offset somewhat by the fact that billing rates increased the same amount as overhead expenses. Prior to the recession, rates rose an average of six to eight percent, Peer Monitor said.

The growth in expenses can be attributed partly to the fact that firms cannot continue to put off certain purchases, such as technology upgrades, even though the industry continues to struggle through the slow recovery, Peer Monitor head Mark Medice said.

Peer Monitor is a Thomson Reuters product.

Several practice areas saw an uptick in the amount of work during the first quarter, as compared to last year. Labor and employment work rose five percent, while capital markets-related work rose six percent. Intellectual property litigation also saw a slight increase. General corporate work, however, fell six percent. There was a small decline in demand for litigation and real estate services as well.

For AmLaw 100 firms, the biggest growth areas were patent-related intellectual property work and capital-markets work. The biggest declines — all less than five percent — were in structured finance, real estate, general corporate work and bankruptcy.

Data due at the end of June could provide a clearer picture for 2012, Medice said. “The first half of the year will often set the tone for where things are going to go. Q2 will be really important to indicate what kind of year we’re going to have.”

(Reporting by Erin Geiger Smith)

Outsourcing of legal and paralegal services means competitive advantage to the practice. It gives more time to concentrate on supervision, appearing in the court, negotiations, etc. which was getting hampered earlier because a lot of time was getting spent on the tedious and repetitive tasks.

On legal outsourcing the Worldwide spending has been estimated to be around $20 BN that means the Compound Annual Growth Rate of 8.1% (CAGR).

The growth of Legal Process Outsourcing space has been constant since the time it has started in the early 90s. Many big deals have been signed up between the UK law firms and Indian LPOs. The industry is enjoying recordable growth and very quickly expanding acceptance. The growth will be strong in the coming years as the massive promise of the industry has not gone unobserved.

The concept of LPO has reached at that stage where the services like Contract Outsourcing Solutions, Legal Research, Legal Transcription along with several Paralegal Services are getting outsourced to India from the UK. It helps them saving their cost along with access to highly skilled professionals in India.

About Draft n Craft:
Established in 2008, Draft n Craft is a Legal Process Outsourcing Company with strong and dedicated work force of professionals. Having established a brilliant track record, Draft n Craft has been partners of growth to many of the law firms and corporations in the UK and US. Draft n Craft’s supreme focus has always been on helping Attorneys deliver the best value to their clients by working on process and technology optimization, and by devising ways to rationalize client’s operational spending.

Those are the conclusions of the American Bar Association Standing Committee on Ethics and Professional Responsibility, which describes outsourcing as a salutary trend in a global economy.  Many lawyers do outsource work, using lawyers or nonlawyers as independent contractors, hiring them directly or through intermediaries and on temporary or ongoing bases, says the committee.

Outsourcing can reduce client costs and enable small firms to provide labor intensive services such as large, discovery intense litigation, even though the firms might not maintain sufficient ongoing staff to handle the work, according to a new ethics opinion issued today.   Ethics Opinion 08-451 details ethics obligations of lawyers and firms that do elect to outsource legal work.

Outsourcing lawyers are subject, like all lawyers, to an obligation to render competent legal services, and lawyers who supervise other lawyers or nonlawyers in performing legal services are responsible for assuring the individuals they supervise comply with ethics rules governing lawyers.  The committee notes that outsourcing lawyers may face challenges in assuring competence and in overseeing work by others, particularly when separated by thousands of miles and substantial time differences.  Minimally, outsourcing lawyers should conduct reference checks and background investigations of lawyer or nonlawyer service providers and any intermediaries.  They may also wish to interview principal lawyers on a project, assessing their educational background, and evaluate the quality and character of any employees likely to access client information, review security systems, and even visit the premises of the service provider.

If the provider is in a foreign country, the outsourcing lawyer should determine whether the legal education system in that country is similar to that of the U.S., and whether professional regulatory systems incorporate equivalent core ethics principles and effective disciplinary enforcement systems.  Some circumstances may require more rigorous supervision than others, according to the committee.  The outsourcing lawyer also should determine whether the foreign legal system protects client confidentiality and provides effective remedies to the lawyer’s client in case disputes arise.

Depending on the level of supervision contemplated by the outsourcing lawyer, it might be necessary to obtain informed client consent before engaging outside assistance.  Informed consent also may be required to reveal confidential information, and the outsourcing lawyer should recognize and minimize the risk that a service provider might breach confidentiality, says the committee, suggesting written confidentiality agreements are “strongly advisable.”

Regarding fees, the opinion says outsourcing lawyers may pass along to the client the costs of using the service provider, including a reasonable allocation of associated overhead expenses, but “no markup is permitted.”  The committee also acknowledges it lacks authority to express an opinion about whether any particular service provider is engaging in unauthorized practice of law, but cautions that if the service provider is found to be not authorized to practice law, and the outsourcing lawyer facilitated that violation, the outsourcing lawyer will have violated ethical rules.

The ABA Standing Committee on Ethics and Professional Responsibility periodically issues ethics opinions for the guidance of lawyers, courts and the public interpreting and applying the ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct to specific issues of legal practice and client-lawyer relationships.

The opinion is available from the ABA Center for Professional Responsibility at http://www.abanet.org/cpr.

With more than 413,000 members, the American Bar Association is the largest voluntary professional membership organization in the world.  As the national voice of the legal profession, the ABA works to improve the administration of justice, promotes programs that assist lawyers and judges in their work, accredits law schools, provides continuing legal education, and works to build public understanding around the world of the importance of the rule of law.

Local law firm leaders say 2011 was an improvement over 2010, but the outlook for 2012 is murky given the political uncertainty in the U.S. and economic turmoil in Europe.

Yet as the economy continues to improve, practice areas including corporate, litigation, intellectual property and real estate are expected to be increasingly busy, whereas bankruptcies are expected to slow, a positive sign for the overall economy. Meanwhile, legal hiring for associates is expected to continue to be tight, according to lawyers and industry watchers.

“We’re having a good year both in terms of revenue and in terms of attracting new talent,” said Andrew Glincher, CEO and managing partner of Nixon Peabody LLP. “I’m looking forward to 2012, although I’m also mindful of the political realities of the Democrats and Republicans working against one another. That will pretty much keep our economic recovery held back.”

In 2011 Nixon Peabody, which has roughly 146 lawyers in Boston, hired 43 lawyers — partners and associates alike.

“I’m seeing some really good signs in terms of business and activity, but you have to be cautious, too,” said Glincher. “I take a look at the clients I’m representing and they all have different challenges. For law firms to think they’re going to escape those challenges, that wouldn’t be good business.”

Bill Curry, co-managing partner of Boston-based Sullivan & Worcester LLP, said that all practice areas were up in 2011, and the firm’s leaders expect corporate work will stay flat or increase in 2012.

Still, on a national level, law firms are predicting small profitability growth for 2012. About 58 percent of the country’s top 200 law firms expect profits per partner to grow 5 percent or less next year, compared with 41 percent of firms who thought so last year, according to a recent survey from American Lawyer.

Clients are also growing more reluctant to part with their cash, with 81 percent of firms seeing more requests for discounts from their clients, according to American Lawyer.

“I think that the legal business is generally picking up, but I don’t think the legal profession as a whole will be back to what it was in pre-recession times for quite a long time,” said Don Frederico, a partner at Pierce Atwood LLP in Boston.

Frederico’s firm, which has more than 130 lawyers across seven offices, has seen business pick up in a handful of practice areas including intellectual property, litigation and financial services.

Next year, “I think lawyers will continue to see business improve, but also I think that with the growth of new technologies, we’re going to see the continued development of new areas of practice,” said Frederico.

David Rosenblatt, managing partner of Burns & Levinson LLP in Boston, said the client push back over billing rates will continue.

“Starting with the recession, clients were able to assert the upper hand in their business relationship with law firms, demanding better value and more reasonable costs,” he said. “That’s going to outlive the recession, so all firms had better be prepared to deal with that.”

The legal hiring market remained bleak in 2011, with most moves being partners jumping from firm to firm. For 2012, the job market looks like it will continue to be hit-and-miss for many out-of-work lawyers, many of whom are recent graduates.

During the first quarter of 2012, one-in-three law firms plan to hire legal staff, however 4 percent are actually planning to reduce personnel, according to a recent Robert Half Legal survey. According to that same survey, bankruptcy and foreclosure, litigation, and labor and employment are the three areas that are expected to see the most growth in the first quarter.

“Hiring has picked up incrementally, but we’re still not back to a robust hiring market,” saidBrion Bickerton, legal hiring consultant with The Bickerton Group in Boston.