Bloomberg Big Law Business is convening leaders of corporate legal departments and law firms to address the diversity and inclusion challenge at a unique invitation-only event – the 4th Big Law Business Diversity Symposium.

The event will take place 8-10 a.m. Wednesday, May 10, 2017, at Bloomberg Government, 1101 K St NW, Suite 500, in Washington, DC 20005.

Request your invitation today to attend sessions such as:

Leading the Profession: Success Stories
Corporate legal departments see the most successful relationships when their goals and their law firm’s priorities are aligned. Hear how peers are approaching this effort and measuring success.

Inspiring Accountability: A Workshop
Big Law Business will facilitate a workshop on how to have the tough conversations on accountability for diversity and inclusion measures. Explore solutions to inspire leaders to create the incentives, models, and structures to increase diversity and stronger inclusion of ideas and skills in the profession.

Symposium Wrap-Up
Accountability measures that resonate: how the workshop results match back to traditional measurements of progress in the diversity of the legal profession.

The event is sponsored by Major, Lindsey & Africa and Quarles & Brady.

Request an invitation.

Bloomberg Big Law Business, in partnership with Catalyst, will convene corporate counsel to discuss the need to control rising legal costs particularly related to litigation at the complimentary event, Controlling Litigation Costs – Managing Your Legal Department for Success.

The event will be Thursday, Feb. 23, 2017, 3-5:30 p.m. Central time, at University Club of Chicago, Northwestern Room, 76 E Monroe St., Chicago, IL 60603.

Technology provides important solutions, but only if implemented effectively and as part of an overall strategy to manage litigation, Bloomberg says on its website. Top general counsel will talk about the ways they are managing litigation and the expectations they set with law firms and technology vendors.

Corporate counsel speakers include:

• Susan Lees, Executive Vice President & General Counsel, Allstate Insurance
• Leslie McKnew, VP, Litigation, CISCO
• Matt Miller, VP, Deputy General Counsel – EMEA, APAC and Global Litigation, Groupon
• Sharyn Procaccio, Vice President and Assistant General Counsel, Hunt Companies

Register for the event.

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The Association of Corporate Counsel, the world’s largest community of in-house counsel, will stage the ACC Mid-Year Meeting in New York on April 2-4, 2017.

The event will be at the New York Marriott Marquis Hotel. General Counsel News readers may receive a $200 discount on the registration fee if they register by Feb. 20.

An ACC release says the meeting will help participants prepare for changes in the regulatory landscape with sessions on:

• The impact of evolving regulations and enforcement trends on contracts
• Current and most controversial changes in employment law
• Reducing financial sector regulatory risk

Other activities will include:

• Engage directly with expert faculty
• Connect with your peers through multiple networking opportunities
• Have the opportunity to earn 12-14 CLE/CPD (1 credit Ethics eligible), 14 CCB CEU credits, and 3-4 CPE credits

Register for the meeting.

General Counsel News and Zapproved have posted a complimentary on-demand webinar titled “Trends in Corporate E-Discovery Data Processing: Benchmark Survey Insights Revealed.”

An expert panel will explore the trends, and discuss the results of the 2017 benchmark survey.

The event provides insights and analysis on:

• In-sourcing vs. outsourcing e-discovery projects
• Satisfaction of process with an eye on factors such as time, cost and ease
• Technology trends affecting how in-house legal teams’ work evolves in 2017 and beyond

Corena Bahr

Speakers were Brad Harris, VP of Products, Zapproved, Inc.; Jack Thompson, Sr. Manager – eDiscovery & Legal Operations, Sanofi US; and Brad Ellis, Corporate VP of Legal Services, Physician Acquisitions, Asst General Counsel – Scripps Health.

The moderator was Corena Bahr, Webinar Consultant & Producer, YourWebinarGuru.

Brad Harris

Brad Harris has more than 30 years of experience in the high technology and enterprise software sectors, including assisting Fortune 1000 companies enhance their e-discovery preparedness through technology and process improvement. He is a frequent author and speaker on data preservation and e-discovery issues, including articles in National Law Journal, Corporate Counsel, Metropolitan Corporate Counsel and Information Management and presentations at leading industry events such as LegalTech New York. Prior to joining Zapproved, he led the development of electronic discovery readiness consulting efforts for Fios, Inc. from 2004 to 2009. He has held senior management positions at prominent public and privately held companies, including Hewlett-Packard, Tektronix and Merant.

Jack Thompson

Jack Thompson is a corporate eDiscovery and Legal Operations professional, specializing in the advancement of efficiency of legal technical operations and information governance.  From 2001 through 2014, He was legal operations manager at Purdue Pharma LP in Stamford, CT providing services and solutions to Purdue’s legal technology operations as well as leading the company’s legal analytics programs.  In 2014, Thompson relocated to Atlanta, GA to work as the legal technology manager for the UPS Corporate Legal Department, followed by working as an IT Business Services Manager for The Coca Cola Company’s global legal department providing technical expertise and process workflow implementations.  Heis currently working as the eDiscovery Manager and Legal Operations Lead for Sanofi US, located in Bridgewater, NJ.

Brad Ellis

Brad Ellis received both his Juris Doctorate and a Master of Law in Taxation from the University of San Diego School of Law. He has 25 years experience in healthcare law, and has worked at Scripps Health for the last 18 years. Prior to joining Scripps Health he was in private practice with a focus in healthcare and the banking industries. In addition to his legal duties, he is responsible for physician acquisition in a business role, and is also responsible for system-wide cyber-security for the Scripps Health system.

See the on-demand webinar.

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Corporate legal departments will decrease spend on outside counsel and take more work in-house in 2017, reveals a new report released by Liquid Litigation Management, Inc. (LLM), a legal workflow unification platform provider. “The State of the Legal Industry” report explores the motivations for technology adoption among U.S. law firms and corporations. It also examines the business benefits firms and their clients expect from technology adoption, as well as the lingering challenges they face.

While the corporations and law firms surveyed said their number one goal of incorporating technology is to boost efficiency, the way they use this new technology can prove counterproductive. The survey found that 64 percent of law firms rely on more than four distinct legal software systems to aid in developing strategy, tracking case management, and collecting, processing and reviewing data. This outsized number of systems, which can lead to inefficiencies and increased cost, is one example of why corporations think law firms are not as efficient as they should be. As a result, corporations are taking more work in-house and spending less on outside help.

“The law firms and GC offices participating in the survey show some interesting similarities and differences,” said Cas Campaigne, Chief Executive Officer and President of LLM. “Both are heavily focused on cost-cutting and efficiency gains, but their priorities differ. If law firms and corporations can work together to figure out how to consolidate their technology and reduce some of these inefficiencies caused by the complexity of systems they use, firms will be better equipped to meet the demands of their customers and corporations will save money.”

Some of the reports other key findings include the following:

• Corporations and law firms want greater budgeting predictability
• Corporations are using Alternative Fee Arrangements (AFAs) to reduce legal costs
• Nearly half of firms only use email to track communication around budget and strategy for historical purposes

“Doing ‘more with less’ is a mantra of many modern law departments. They are starting to demand similar discipline from their external providers,” said Casey Flaherty, former in-house counsel and founder of Procertas. “Talking about efficiency in the abstract isn’t enough. Corporations want measurable efficiencies and tractable savings without compromising quality. Many law firms struggle to meet these mandates. Buying technology is different from using technology is different from using technology well. Interoperability and integration are among the primary challenges we have in making our tools really work for us.”

The report provides other insights of particular interest to the legal community, such as:

• The most significant changes firms and GC offices anticipate in the coming months
• Their biggest obstacles
• How frequently firms communicate with their clients
• The ways in which corporations and firms want to use tech to improve operating efficiencies
• The degree to which legal departments and law firms leverage historical data and why
• The impact of AFAs on technology purchases
• The relative ability for firms and clients to keep pace with change

Download the report.

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General Electric has developed what it’s calling a Yelp for lawyers, reports Bloomberg Law.

The report says the internal website allows the company’s approximately 800 in-house lawyers to search “preferred providers” of outside counsel and learn about their track record with the company.

“Titled GE Select Connect, more than 200 of the company’s outside law firms maintain profiles (à la Facebook) that feature firm information, including feedback the outside firms have received from GE lawyers, the firm’s diversity staffing levels, hourly rates, along and discounts the company has previously achieved,” Bloomberg reports.

Read the Bloomberg article.

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Zapproved, Inc., a developer of cloud‐based software for corporate legal departments, announced it will hold the inaugural Corporate E-Discovery Hero Awards Celebration on Jan. 30 in New York, preceding Legaltech New York 2017.

Nina Totenberg, NPR’s award-winning legal affairs correspondent who has reported on issues surrounding the Supreme Court since 1975, will be the featured speaker at the awards celebration. Totenberg will share insights from her extensive career covering the court as well as her thoughts on the Supreme Court’s direction in light of the incoming Trump administration.

The Corporate E-Discovery Hero Awards honors e-discovery experts and corporate legal professionals who demonstrate excellence and contribute significantly toward improving in-house e-discovery processes and implementing best practices. The awards were established to recognize legal professionals who are leading their organizations by improving efficiency, reducing costs and lowering risk through creativity and innovation.

Industry professionals can nominate an E-Discovery Hero for consideration by Dec. 23, 2016, for recognition at the Corporate E-Discovery Hero Awards Celebration. Nominees should be an e-discovery expert or in-house legal professional who has demonstrated excellence in:

• Technology, systems and metrics
• Team process and workflow
• Employee training and support
• Strategy best practices
• Overall influence and achievement

The event will take place at 7 p.m., January 30, 2017 at the New World Stages, 340 West 50th Street, New York, NY 10019.

Reserve a seat

Image by NY Photographic

More than 40 percent of legal departments indicated the top benefit of increasing efficiency is being able to focus on more strategic work, and many are turning to legal department operations professionals to enable them to be more strategic in how they advise the business, according to the Thomson Reuters 2016 Legal Department In-Sourcing and Efficiency Report: The Keys to a More Effective Legal Department. The report, conducted for a second consecutive year, surveyed 429 attorneys and operational professionals working in corporate legal departments and examines how in-house teams are managing internal and external resources to achieve greater efficiency and productivity.

“As expected, we continued to hear that corporate legal departments are doing more with less,” said Mark Haddad, vice president of the Corporate segment for Thomson Reuters. “In-house teams are still dealing with the larger market changes that occurred following the 2008 global economic meltdown, and the survey uncovered how some in-house leaders are adjusting to these shifts: hiring legal department operations professionals to act as their change agents.”

The report reveals a rise in employing legal department operations (LDO) professionals in response to a backlash against the time-consuming administrative work facing legal departments. Many departments reported being besieged by the operational activities that come with being part of a corporation. Among the ways general counsel are addressing this is by employing LDOs to foster change.

“LDOs are managing outside counsel and employing legal managed services providers, as well as identifying and deploying new technologies across the legal department,” explained Haddad. “It’s an encouraging development in the legal profession. General counsel indicated a strong need to work more strategically, and bringing in LDO professionals to concentrate on business operations allows corporate counsel to focus on legal work and be more proactive and strategic in how they advise the business.”

The report found another upside to employing LDO professionals: By allowing corporate counsel to dedicate more time to the practice of law, less work has to go to outside counsel. The report analyzes how legal departments are keeping work in house, particularly with certain tasks related to contracts, intellectual property, mergers and acquisitions, and litigation. The report also explores which matters and tasks in-house counsel still turn to outside counsel for, and the reasons driving the work to law firms, including legal complexity and jurisdictional reasons.

“By changing how legal departments partner with outside counsel, hiring LDOs and implementing new technologies, legal departments are finding more ways to adapt to cost pressures and see a greater return on total legal spend,” added Haddad.

The report findings underscore general counsels’ awareness of the need for greater innovation to improve efficiency and productivity. It also assesses how in-house teams are introducing efficiencies within their legal departments — across people, processes and technology — and are further redefining the in-house/outside counsel relationship.

Download the report.

Bloomberg Law will hold the Big Law Business Summit – West, convening the future leaders of Big Law, chief legal officers, outside counsel, and those serving legal departments around the world to discuss challenges and share ideas about the legal industry.

The event will be Oct. 27, 2016, from 1:30 to 6 p.m. Pacific time, with a networking reception to follow. The location will be The Standard Hotel, 550 S. Flower Street, Los Angeles, CA 90071.

Featured panelists will be:

• Elizabeth Baker, General Counsel, Twitch Interactive
• Brad Butwin, Chair, O’Melveny & Myers LLP
• Sharon Tomkins, Vice President & General Counsel, Southern California Gas Company

Register for the event.

The International Association of Defense Counsel (IADC) will present its inaugural Corporate Counsel Training Academy, in partnership with Georgetown Law CLE, June 16-17 at Georgetown Law Center in Washington, D.C.

Registration is still open for the two-day CLE program designed to provide practical training for counsel with three or fewer years of in-house experience, as well as those who are planning a transition from a law firm or a government position to a corporate legal department.

“The IADC created the Corporate Counsel Training Academy as a practical ‘bootcamp’ to help ease the sometimes difficult transition from outside law practice to in-house counsel,” said Alfred R. Paliani, IADC’s vice president of corporate and co-organizer of the Academy. “Our Academy faculty is composed of experienced corporate counsel with first-hand experience with the issues that they will address during the Academy – focusing on the practical, not the theoretical.”

A 2,400 member, invitation-only organization, the IADC serves its members and their clients, as well as the civil justice system and the legal profession. The organization maintains a leadership role in many areas of legal reform and professional development.

Academy attendees will receive advice and real-world tips that they can take back to their desks and use immediately. Session topics will include:

–Transitioning from Outside to Inside: What is this Strange New World?;
–It’s Your Money Now: The Reality of Life as An In-House Attorney;
–Mini MBA for In-House Lawyers: Essential Accounting and Financial Concepts;
–Ethics for Corporate Counsel 101: A New Paradigm;
–What DO GCs Look For in Newly Hired In-House Lawyers?; and
–21st Century Darwinism: Evolving from Corporate Lawyer to Corporate Leader.

“Through these and other topics, Academy faculty will share the kinds of practical insights that will make senior in-house lawyers say, ‘Wow, I wish I knew some of that stuff when I first left my law firm to go in-house,’ ” Paliani added. “We look forward to the Academy becoming an annual event and popular addition to IADC’s high-quality education programming that benefits our members and the legal community at-large.”

The Corporate Counsel Training Academy is open to IADC members and non-members. For additional information, including the program brochure, or to register for the program, visit http://www.iadclaw.org/education-events/cle-events/corporate-counsel-training-academy/. A live webcast of the program will be available for attendees who are unable to participate in-person.

The International Association of Defense Counsel (IADC) is an invitation-only global legal organization for attorneys who represent corporate and insurance interests. Founded in 1920, the IADC’s members hail from five continents, 45 countries, and all 50 U.S. states. The core purposes of the IADC are to enhance the development of skills, promote professionalism, and facilitate camaraderie among its members, their clients, as well as the broader civil justice community. For more information, visit www.iadclaw.org.

Live Conference:
Tuesday, May 3, 2:30 p.m.,
New York, NY

Bloomberg BNA will present a live conference titled Big Law Business Diversity & Inclusion Conference: A Call to Action, the third in the series of Diversity & Inclusion events, where Big Law Business will begin to take the next steps toward driving results and holding our profession accountable for progress.

The event will be on Tuesday, May 3, 2016 in New York, NY, beginning at 2:30 p.m. EDT and ending with an hour-long reception at 5:30 p.m. It will be at  the Harold Pratt House at 58 East 68th Street. General Counsel News readers may attend at no charge. (Registration form)

General counsel and their legal teams play a unique and important role in the conversation regarding Diversity & Inclusion in the legal profession – as the buyside of legal services, they are well-positioned to drive and influence the quality of legal services they receive. They are also currently moving more legal work in-house and the department’s ability to ensure diversity of ideas and thought leadership within their own teams is critical.

During this exclusive event, Big Law Business will convene chief legal counsel and their corporate senior diversity officers as well as law firm managing partners to focus on actionable results, accountability, and drive movement forward toward diversity in the legal profession.

The event is an opportunity to explore the success Big Law practices are having meeting their own workforce diversification goals, plus:

• Interviews and presentations on best practice
• Methods law schools, law firms, and the judiciary can utilize to collaborate to feed the in-house pipeline
• Ideas to take back to legal departments for immediate and long-term action

The conference agenda is available online.

Register for the conference.

The cornerstone of a productive client and outside counsel relationship starts by setting clear and consistent expectations for the legal department at the outset of the client engagement, says Kelly Spratt-Szarzynski, senior strategic consultant on the LexisNexis® CounselLink team.

This involves developing an outside counsel guidelines document that formally communicates the legal department expectations.  These guidelines apply to all external legal vendors and helps hold all parties accountable to the same set of standards related to billing, matter management and corporate policies.

According to Spratt-Szarzynski, outside counsel guidelines generally contain information broken into the following three categories: Processes and procedures, requirements, and policies.

Read the article.

Mitratech, a provider of Enterprise Legal Management (ELM) solutions, has recognized legal service provider Elevate as a Certified Partner to offer legal bill review services to Mitratech’s fast-growing client base.

“Our leading spend management and e-Billing systems automate much of the invoicing process and can save up to 10% in legal costs, but even more value is generated when a team consistently reviews the adjustments made by the technology. We have found that many clients don’t have the time or resources to take this on, and Elevate’s services address precisely that need,” noted Jason Parkman, CEO of Mitratech.

In a release, the company said several Mitratech clients already use Elevate’s services and have achieved several benefits, including:
• 3–10% additional cost savings as a result of more sophisticated and consistent review
• Reassignment of in-house staff to other valuable work within the department
• Reduced cycle time between invoice receipt and payment, enabling early payment discounts
• Enhanced invoice management and cost control processes

Read the release.