Questions GCs Should Ask

• Posted by Geoffrey G. Gussis on January 8th, 2007


• Filed in Guides, Tips and Practice Pointers

Want to get better service from your outside counsel? Asking the right questions at the outset will help, as a recent post at Prism Legal Consulting points out. Here are a few of the questions worth asking:

• "Do you actively manage and budget matters? Just drafting a
  plan or budget causes lawyers to consider the flow of work, the
  possible scenarios, the resources required, and the likely time frames.
  The plan also serves as a valuable communications tool between the firm
  and law department. Spreadsheets are an easy-to-use tool for this. I
  have to do a budget for my boss, I want you to do one for me.
• What’s your approach to managing discovery?
  I don’t an army of associates or contract attorneys manually reviewing
  gigabytes of documents? Make sure your firm uses the appropriate
  approach to search and identify relevant documents. Increasingly, this
  means concept searching or other sophisticated software that reduces
  the number of documents lawyers must review.
• Transactions are expensive – how do you keep costs down?
  I’m coming to you for high stakes deals. I expect you to have the
  routine aspects of my transaction down pat. Do you have document
  assembly, master forms, checklists, interactive tools, or other systems
  that make you efficient for for the routine elements of my deal?
• Do you regularly perform early case assessments?
  Before diving into a new matter, it makes business sense to assess the
  stakes, the public relations value, the potential to settle, and the
  possibility of ADR. A formal process might include the use of formal
  risk analysis tools (decision trees) to quantify the value and
  consulting jury verdict databases to help assess potential damages."

Link: Strategic Legal Technology :: January :: 2007.