In Conclusion
There is no template for delivering a managed legal service by law firms. This offering has to be crafted in partnership with a willing and invested client. It cannot be overstated how important it is for the consumer of an innovative service (aka, the in-house team) to be willing to invest the time and insights necessary for a law firm to be successful.
In our case, my team had a very transparent conversation about the need to change and what that would be mean for the internal legal professionals that were doing the work prior to the transition. Everyone has to be committed to making such a transformation successful. Law firm and in-house legal team must align interests and goals to jointly develop a successful managed service delivery model. Law firms can't market this sort of delivery model in the abstract, without specific experience already in progress, and in-house teams can't demand this delivery model without being very clear on the desired outcomes and planning. What law firms can market is a willingness to try something new and curiosity for experimentation.Liquid Legal Context
by Dr. Dierk Schindler, Dr. Roger Strathausen, Kai Jacob
Lucy Bassli has a clear vision when she talks about the changed expectations of corporate clients for law firms: It is time for a radical shift. “It is time for law firms to deliver services with the quality of a law firm but with the operational excellence of an outsourcing company.” And with Markfort and Meents/Allen, two prominent voices of big law firms agree with her.
But what about the LPO's, specifically the new type of LPO's that mix up the legal industry and are often referred to as the change agents? To be provocative: May we interpret Bassli's statement as pointing out the limits of the future market for LPO's? Are LPOs lacking the depth and breadth of substantive legal advice—or simply the license to practice law—to become true contenders of law firms?
Well, this is where Mark Ross' provocative question comes in, when he asks “what is in a name?” Ross claims there is essentially no difference between LPOs and managed legal services. To be fair, Ross makes a strong and convincing case for how LPO's will become a strong and complementary player in the legal industry by constantly combining the cutting edge of legally trained resources and technology.
But he also points us to a very valid question, especially considering developments like the UK Legal Services Act, which permits non-lawyers to own and manage law firms in the form of Alternative Business Structures: Could at some point a law firm become “just” one arm of the offering of an LPO?
Lucy Endel Bassli joined the legal department of Microsoft in 2004, providing legal support to the central procurement organization globally and across all lines of business at Microsoft. In recent years, she has focused extensively on complex and global outsourcing contracts and gained firsthand experience in outsourcing by engaging an outsourced legal services provider (LPO) to assist her with high-volume contract transactions. She recently launched a new “managed services” engagement with law firms. She oversees a centralized contracting office in the legal department of Microsoft, specializing in contracting tools, and process efficiencies and automation.