Cost Savings Needed? What You Can Do Now to Generate Savings

Posted on April 27, 2009 by ACC Staff

By Nancy Jessen, speaker for ACC's April 29th Webcast, Cost Control in the Current Economic Environment

Law departments are under pressure to reduce costs significantly. These cuts must be made even as workloads are likely to increase as a result of compliance requirements, potential increases in litigation, and heightened regulatory scrutiny.

Best practices support developing a comprehensive strategy that takes into consideration the existing operational environment, the need for tighter budgetary control and future workloads.  This requires significant time and effort which today’s reality does not allow. 
Law departments want to continue to provide the services needed as economically as possible, without cutting corners and quality.  But time for a deep dive analysis is a luxury and the question arises, “What can we do now?”

Internal headcount cuts and outside counsel rate reductions are common tactics.  While they may produce short term savings, sustaining the savings may be more difficult.  Will your internal headcount cuts drive up outside counsel usage and cost?  Will your outside counsel raise rates next year?  There are tactics that provide savings over a longer term and that can be implemented in the short term.  

A simple but often overlooked tactic is enforcing your outside counsel guidelines.  Conduct an audit of the copy, fax and travel charges from your outside counsel – do they adhere to the guidelines? Are you paying out too much? You may already have tools such as e-billing in place to help you enforce. 

Does the work need to be performed by a law firm or can it be accomplished by another vendor for less cost?  Areas where work is commonly unbundled or outsourced include document review, e-discovery and immigration.  Using non-law firm vendors can significantly reduce your costs in these areas.

We will discuss these tactics and more on the webcast, “Cost Control in the Current Economic Environment”, April 29, 2009 at 1:00 pm EDT.  Join us to learn more about the core concepts of cost control and tactics that can be implemented quickly to produce results. 
 


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Harvard is not at fault?! Give me a break.

Posted on January 9, 2009 by Larry Salibra

Academia is starting to raise its defense to the suggestion that perhaps it might have to accept some culpability for the present financial melt down. I am picking on Harvard not because it alone is to blame, but because CNBC raised the issue in a story on Harvard Business School and because Harvard had more than its fair share of graduates, both lawyers and businessmen, at the epicenter of the problem.

When CNBC, whose special on Harvard Business School, which was clearly designed to promote the institution, raised a few tough questions to maintain the appearance of objectivity, such as did the school contribute to the culture that created the problem we face, they answered the question by selecting to interview Jamie Dimon, the CEO of Chase. He defended the school by saying they do not teach you how to be bad people. That would certainly be an answer for an Enron situation, but it is hardly an answer to a wide spread systemic failure of the financial system. Too many graduates of Harvard Business School, Harvard Law School and a collection of other prestigious business schools and law schools had to be willing participants for this to be attributed to personal failures.

For all the claims about the value of case study method of Harvard and the optimistic predictions of a professor at Harvard Business School who is in self-denial, one thing is clear. These prestigious graduates engaged in fundamentally the same conduct that caused the tulip boom and crash of the 1600’s. So what was it they paid $180,000 to learn?
 

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