Select the Right Partner
While most attorneys are familiar with RFPs (Requests for Proposals), because our business clients do these, we still only rarely use them for legal services. Only recently have RFPs for legal services from law firms become more common.
Law firms are getting better at responding to them, and legal departments are getting better at issuing them. Still, we have a long way to go. Legal departments should engage their company's procurement team to leverage those best practices for sourcing services. There is still the perception that legal services are so unique, but there is a lot that can be learned for the standard procurement process of running an RFP. The legal team should modify the RFP documents to make sense for the purchase of legal services, but certainly can benefit from the more generic process well-established by procurement professionals.Spend time with the respondents and learn about their capabilities and innovative solutions to deliver legal services, but also spend time getting a sense of their culture. Will the law firm's culture match the culture of the legal department? Preferences for communication styles, drafting styles and risk tolerances are just a few of the attributes that can quickly signal whether or not there is a match. Also an important factor is the law firm's policy for conflict checks and seeking waivers. That will become critical, and is unique to law firms, since most LPO's can provide dedicated teams walled off from other clients, so that conflicts are not an issue. With law firms, it is critical to define the alternative solutions when the law firm will have a conflict, and to set timelines for the conflict checks to avoid delays in processing.
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