Working with external legal suppliers

This subtopic is intended for law firm GCs considering outsourcing some legal services to external suppliers. It contains a suite of tools and guidance to assist you with:

•
the outsourcing decision and to formulate a legal service outsourcing strategy
•
setting up a panel, and
•
managing external suppliers

Legal services outsourcing strategy

Gathering information

Whether you are thinking about the possibility of outsourcing some legal services or you’ve been given the immediate objective of reducing spend on external legal support, you need to start by gathering information—see Practice Note: Legal services outsourcing—in-house lawyers—information gathering.

Key internal stakeholders

A useful place to start to gather information is to discover what has been going on up to now.

You should arrange short meetings with the directors and heads of function in your organisation.

The following Precedents will help you to elicit information about what legal services have been outsourced in the past and to who, what is the strategic direction of the business and each department and what legal risks are faced by each department:

•
Legal services outsourcing meeting—agenda and meeting plan—CEO
•
Legal

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