01 — Outsourced in-house counsel for fast growth start-up

Problem: a fast-growth start up in the FMCG sector had received extensive media coverage and significant external funding rounds so was experiencing a massive growth trajectory. All legal work was being outsourced direct by the business but without an internal lawyer to ‘triage’ the work, there were no controls around what was being outsourced, to which firms and at what cost.

Often the same question was outsourced by different people across the business, resulting in duplication and unnecessary costs and the questions being asked of the external law firms were broad and general, meaning there was no clear answer on the best way forward (For example, ‘tell me all about the laws in Australia about topic xyz’ versus - ‘we want to be able to do abc in x locations within y timeframe - how we can make it happen’?

Solution: a consulting in-house legal counsel was brought on board to assist with structuring the outsourcing process, ‘triage’ all requests, clarify the scope and desired outcome of the question, source the most appropriate firm (top-tier/small specialist firm), agree scope, costs and terms of engagement, review the work delivered by the law firms and work with the business to implement it and iron out any questions.

The result was clearer legal answers to the actual questions at hand, cost controls and more commercial advice from the right advisory panel (plus the ability for the business to have a cost-effective in-house lawyer as a sounding board, without the stress of 6 minute billing intervals).

02 — Legal panel tender for Australian entity with Asia-Pacific reach

Problem: an Australian-based SME had expanded into off-shore markets across Asia and was managing most matters using Australian law firms, or ad hoc off-shore providers that were largely sourced via Google searches. There were a number of challenges around language barriers, different legal systems, the scope of works and hours charged (with some firms charging USD$1000/hour per lawyer, plus the costs of a translator).

Solution: a consultant was brought on board on a temporary assignment to scope out the types of matters the business needed help with and in which countries. The consultant ran an RFP to identify law firms that were suitable for different types of work (e.g. commercial, employment, disputes), their rates (including discounted hourly rates, free value adds), terms of engagement (payment terms, disbursements), specific requirements (pre-approval for any costs over estimates) as well as bespoke engagement protocols (who in the business can engage external law firms, sign off on invoices etc).

The output was a clear approved supplier matrix that the business could use to choose the most suitable law firm based on the subject matter, dollar value, strategic importance & risk profile of the task (e.g. an NDA review is a relatively low risk / low dollar value task so does not need top-tier advice). In addition, a clear internal process was established around outsourcing which resulted in tighter cost controls.

03 — Technology solution for busy GC in large corporation

Problem: a General Counsel for a large corporation with a reasonably well staffed legal team was faced with constant complaints from the team that there was ‘too much work and not enough resource’.

The difficulty was that each team member had various ad hoc ways of tracking their work, with varying degrees of detail and accuracy. There is a natural hesitation from in-house lawyers to want to track their time (given they left private practice to avoid billable hours), however the GC needed transparency and accurate metrics around what the legal team is working on, in order to make better resourcing decisions, particularly in light of increased budget pressures.

Solution: an external consultant spent some time doing a ‘deep dive’ with the GC and each team member on their workloads, work types and pain points. By having an independent third party propose time and task tracking software on a temporary basis, the GC was able to get some better visibility of productivity (or rather, lack thereof).

Armed with that information, the GC was able to implement a technology solution to formally capture legal work requests, streamline and automate low value tasks, as well as track and report to Management on all the strategic high value / high risk matters that the legal team support with. This gave the legal team a higher profile within the business, which in turn improved team engagement (and therefore, productivity!).

04 — Legal foundations for SME looking to build in-house capability

Problem: an SME had experienced significant growth and whilst they were outsourcing to a range of law firms, they really needed someone who understood their business and could quickly deal with some of the day to day work that needed to be done, as well as develop better business frameworks such as HR policies and procedures, code of conduct, delegations of authority and sign-off processes.

The frustration was that they were not big enough to justify the cost of hiring a full time in-house lawyer, and hiring a junior/mid-level lawyer would not provide the expertise and experience they needed. They were also needing some robust HR policies and procedures to be able to deal with some employee performance and behavioural issues, as well as keep tighter controls around who is approved to sign off on contracts, expenses and other business decisions.

Solution: a highly experienced lawyer was engaged on a retainer basis, with the lawyer engaged as a virtual in-house legal consultant for a fixed number of hours each week to respond to ad hoc queries, develop a suite of internal policies and procedures across legal, risk and compliance.

After some initial time in the office, the work was done remotely and spread across the week which ensured continuous legal support for the business at a competitive rate, but offered the highly experienced lawyer flexibility around other family commitments. A win: win for both parties.