A Value-based Client-firm Relationship: Part VIII
Balancing strategic roles and tactical delivery
Week 8. Each week via the In-House ACCess blog, follow the promise and pitfalls of forming a new value-based client-firm relationship. ACC Value Challenge steering committee member Ken Grady, General Counsel and Secretary of Wolverine World Wide, offered to profile his selection and start-up process of launching a trademark portfolio management engagement with law firm Seyfarth Shaw. Ken's co-blogger is Lisa Damon, a member of Seyfarth's Executive Committee and leader of the firm's efforts to incorporate Lean Six Sigma into its business. The voice, views and stories expressed by the authors below are their own and not ACC’s. To catch up on the story so far, click here.
The client side
From Ken:
Lisa and I have been talking about the role of outside counsel as we discuss this burgeoning relationship. I suspect this discussion is controversial, because to some in-house counsel it sounds like a threat. It has taken decades for in-house GC’s to evolve into their current role as valued senior executives. Not long ago, the GC’s role was to channel work from inside to outside. Why should GCs now invite outside counsel to sit at the table and potentially drain away that power? In the context of these posts, why should I invite Seyfarth to sit at our table?
The answer is more complex than a 500-word blog post will allow, but here is my quick take on it. A good GC, and increasingly a good global GC, should emulate many of the same behaviors as good global CEOs. Good CEOs consistently recognize that their companies benefit by having many minds at the table. Their personalities help them channel those minds to achieve goals more effectively than each CEO could do through his or her own efforts. With an ever-expanding regulatory environment, business models increasing in complexity, and black swans circling just out of sight, even GCs of relatively simple businesses need that collective power working through the risks their clients face.
I think some GCs feel threatened that having outside counsel at the table will result in the CEO seeing the outside counsel as the true advisor. More effective GCs will overcome this hesitation and have confidence in their own abilities, in their relationships with their internal team and with outside counsel. Outside counsel who have a weak relationship with the GC or who have interests that are poorly aligned with the company’s interests won’t be good partners and may show that the GC’s fears were well-founded. That, to me, is another reason why I want to spend the time building a strong relationship with outside counsel and why I want a fee relationship that aligns interests.
Another way to think about the goal of a value fee relationship is to compare it to the compensation structure for senior executives (beware the metaphor). In simple terms, a well-constructed compensation structure should, among other things, (1) align the interests of the senior executives; (2) align the senior executives’ interests with corporate goals; and (3) provide clear rewards for achieving well-defined goals. Since my outside counsel are an extension of the in-house team, I would like to see our interests aligned, I’d like to have our outside counsel’s interests aligned with our corporate goals, and I’d like to provide them with clear rewards for achieving well-defined goals.
So, Seyfarth and I are talking about Seyfarth’s role at the table. This means drawing them into the strategic discussions with our internal business partners, but it also means understanding that their fee drives off that strategic work. In linkage terms – our portfolio is a risk management tool and a strategic tool. We tend to understand the risk management piece, so now we are working on the strategic piece – how do we tie Seyfarth’s role to the in-house team’s role to our corporate strategic objectives.
Next: Tying in some of the messy accounting stuff.
The firm view
From Lisa:
As Ken notes, one of the roles of outside counsel in delivering value must be that of strategic business advisor. Done right, we know that this advisory role can both complement and strengthen the GC’s position with his or her executive leadership. While Ken, or his GC counterpart at another company, will always know the organizational issues, context and culture better than we as outside providers, our very exposure to a host of different clients, with a range of risks and risk management strategies, may put us in a very good position to round out the GC’s and legal team’s analysis. We can bring a depth and diversity of perspective to the GC’s table, fully participate as a team member, and add value at the highest level.
While these strategic role discussions continue, we also have to manage the other half of the value equation -- the ‘industrial role’ that Ken referenced last week -- and get things done quickly and efficiently.
For our weekly readers, you may be wondering what we have been up to on the ground? Well, a lot. To date, we’ve transitioned six of the Wolverine brands, or about one sixth of the company’s portfolio (roughly 600 of a total 3,500 marks). And, working with Ken and his team, we’ve done this rapidly and efficiently in less than 60 days.
Because Wolverine’s trademark assets are central to the company’s business, we knew the transition process had to be delivered on-time, on-budget and on expectation. We have been using project management resources to help us get the job done. As we have adapted lean six sigma to the world of a law firm and its clients, project management has been a key component of what we have implemented. We combine it with a set of Lean tools and disciplines but we rely on our client-facing project management office to help drive our internal and external teams.
There are a number of successful ways to apply project management skills and tools to legal work, such as those identified by LegalBizDev blogger Steve Barrett (link to: How Should Law Firms “Gear Up” to Manage Projects Better? – A 50,000-foot View (Part 2 of 2). For our work with Wolverine, we wanted our project management role to play an integral and strategic role in delivering client value and help drive the success of our relationship:
· Program Management: To begin the transfer process, Wolverine provided us with an initial schedule, which served as our foundation for development of a high-level timeline and accompanying detailed project plan. To ensure we stay on track, our internal team meets weekly to obtain status, discuss issues and share lessons learned to improve processes for the transition of the remaining brands.
· Collaboration: An essential element to this partnership is collaboration with Wolverine's former trademark firm. To facilitate an aligned effort, we developed a process map, checklist and protocols for the intake processes of these files to ensure data accuracy and to procure knowledge of Wolverine's trademark portfolio.
· Knowledge Management: In our ‘Voice of Client’ interview, Wolverine emphasized the importance of transparency and real time knowledge management capabilities. In response, we created a shared knowledge platform, using our Firm's extranet capabilities. The tool is designed to improve knowledge transfer, minimize risk and provide full transparency of status and priorities including key documents, metrics, etc.
· Process Management: We have scheduled the first of several joint process mapping sessions to be facilitated by Seyfarth's Project Management Office. We will conduct virtual sessions with key stakeholders to develop an improved process for handling various aspects of the trademark portfolio. We will also use these sessions to identify and/or develop template documents, checklists and guidelines to further enhance and promote best practices for the newly defined streamlined processes.
The effort to define the ‘rules of the road’, our relationship needs to move ahead on multiple fronts. So far, we’ve used several Lean tools and a healthy dose of project management to ensure a successful transition, and it will be vital to our ongoing strategic partnership with Wolverine--both from the industrial and artisinal perspectives. All of this though, is just the tip of the iceberg. We haven’t thought of everything and as they say, ‘more minds are better than one.’
That said, how have you used legal project management and how has it contributed to your client-firm relationships?
Next: Next stage of the fee discussions and more reports from the ground.
