Decide What Outcomes You Seek
It is important to think through within the legal department exactly what is intended from the outsourcing process. These outcomes will be unique to the department depending on what the goals are for outsourcing.
Consider whether this is just an alternative resourcing structure to free up the time of the internal employees or to save money on outside counsel, or whether there is a goal to gather deeper insights into the legal work currently handled in-house. Of course, it could be a combination of these and others. Regardless of the stated goals, the desired outcomes must be reasonable and within the scope of capabilities sought from the providers.It is very easy to come up with a grandiose wish-list of goals, but care should be taken that the goals are actually achievable. Naturally, a good service-provider will advise on the goals and should honestly describe what is and isn't possible. An easy trap for clients to fall into is the “metrics buffet:” all the data you want for one set price. This is not as great as it sounds, and certainly not always very helpful. Often the client is overjoyed with the prospect of receiving data about the work that for years has been completely unmeasurable that they want everything tracked and measured. This is a cumbersome task for the service-provider and often yields data which the client does very little with. Consider requesting the data that will actually inform changes within the legal department or the outsourced process.
6.3