Category: Legal Operations

As companies continue to grapple with the economic distress presented by COVID and think more strategically about their operations, many are turning to their outside counsel for rate relief.

If you’ve taken the step to negotiate discounts or rate freezes with your law firms, it’s likely you’ve been met with some pushback leaving you to ask – now what?

Negotiations can be prolonged and intimidating conversations if you’re not prepared. Wouldn’t it be helpful to know what’s going on behind the scenes at the other end of the negotiation table?

Well, you’re in luck!

The Council of Luminaries, a group of law firm pricing thought leaders, offered its law firm pricing representatives the following commentary and guidance on dodging client discount requests:

• “Clients have begun to talk about legal services as if it’s health care, where there’s some moral obligation toward affordability. But we are under no obligation to provide services at any price we did not set.”
• “The Luminaries expressed dismay that the client perspective seems to be that firms should have to pay a penance for prospering in good financial times, that they ‘make too much money.’”

• “Clients that prioritize diversity should realize that unilateral demands for low rates can negatively impact it, because it can inhibit promotion of diverse attorneys, or incentivize firms to staff them on other matters where the financial impact to the firm and professional development opportunities for the lawyers will be more advantageous.”
• “Conversations around value are better if the GC is at the table and can talk about what’s really going on with the company and the firm’s work for it; we can negotiate a give-and-take more effectively in that context.”
• “It seems most GCs are more concerned about selecting the best firm for each job than they are about the costs associated with it. There’s not much actual incentive to choose a lower tier firm. It fails a risk vs. reward analysis. The trick is making the optimal selection of those providers within the constraints of the allocated budget.”
• “It remains critical to protect premium brands and offerings as reducing price on best-in-class services, particularly ones that are experiencing demand and deliver high value to the client, can have a lasting negative effect on firm brand positioning.”

When initiating rate discount conversations with your law firms, it’s critical to keep this in mind in order to yield the best results for your company.

To help you further navigate your negotiations and conversations with your law firms, Bodhala has compiled a set of common law firm objections and suggested responses that will assist you in asserting a value-driven conversation that leads to positive results for your business.

Law Firm Objection/Assertion #1: Since the start of the pandemic, we’ve had our top tier partners and associates handling your urgent legal matters. We’ve provided you with our best minds and have proven our sincere commitment to your business during these challenging times.

Client Response #1: While we appreciate your commitment and your top attorneys, we are under significant pressure to contain costs and cannot justify paying these premium rates during such economic turmoil. We are expecting all of our business partners to share in the economic burden Covid has presented.

Law Firm Objection/Assertion #2: If our rates were truly too high, we’d be receiving discount requests from far more clients. Our clients have realized that they need our help more than ever during these difficult times. Because of this, they have accepted the rates we have charged – in fact, those rates are higher than yours.

Client Response #2: Certain clients may be willing to pay above-market rates, but we cannot do so as we look to contain costs during this economic crisis. Each business is different and how some clients handle the burden Covid has presented is not a catch-all solution for the rest of your clients.

Law Firm Objection/Assertion #3: Your business is already getting a good deal on your rates as our realization rate with you is low versus our other clients. We understand the economic stress Covid has presented, but we simply cannot justify reducing your rates even further. It would be detrimental for us to do so.

Client Response #3: Your firm has been a critical partner for our business for several years and we value the relationship, but how you handle the relationship during our most significant time of need also matters to us. If our CFO and GC thought our business was truly getting a good deal, we would not be asking this of you. We agreed to pay the rates you are referencing during a time of economic stability, but due to Covid, that is no longer the case and we are asking you to realize that.

Law Firm Objection/Assertion #4: Our law firm has struggled throughout the pandemic as well as we’ve had to deal with the challenges of remote work, furloughs, court closures, and more. The rates we are charging your business are within the market.

Client Response #4: We understand that Covid has presented challenges for all businesses, but we are also aware that in past crises, law firms have remained stable, even experiencing profits while other industries struggle. We are asking you to share in our economic pain as there is no reason for above-inflation rate increases – especially during this period of distress. We are aware of similar clients in the market that have been granted rate freezes and discounts by their law firms. As a valued business partner of ours, we are expecting the same from your firm.

As you optimize your spend and drive value from your outside counsel relationships, Bodhala is here to offer real transparency, real accountability, and real control.

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Get in touch with our team of legal billing and data experts to find out how Bodhala can transform your legal department.

Whether to optimize legal spend or drive diversity efforts, legal operations professionals are leaning on data to accelerate their department’s key initiatives. 

Without data, legal operations teams are left at a standstill, unable to make strategic decisions that create meaningful impact, such as:

• Reallocating spend to optimize savings and meet departmental priorities, like diversity initiatives
• Identifying and controlling the above-inflation growth of rate cards
• Initiating empowered negotiations and conversations with law firms

The need for clean, actionable data has never been more significant as companies grapple to get a hold of their spend after the economic distress Covid has caused and the urgency of diversity initiatives in the vitally important era of Black Lives Matter. 

Bodhala CEO, Raj Goyle, led legal operations professionals from Fortune 500 companies through insightful discussions on the power of data this afternoon during Consero’s Virtual KnowledgeBridge.

Data’s Impact on Spend Management

In-house teams need to allocate their resources towards significant value-drivers. 

That means no more surprise invoices, no more paying A-team prices for C-team legal talent, and no more hiring firms that do not deliver the quality of work or expertise your legal matters need. 

As we heard from attendees, there’s a burning desire to eliminate these issues, but they struggle to wrangle clean data needed to make this a reality. 

One attendee shared that they are hard-pressed to get any data that can help inform decision making.

Though other professionals need to meet certain standards to get a raise in pay, it seems that companies have no choice but to shell out more and more money each year to compensate their legal counsel.

But legal operations professionals are looking to change that.

They want to leverage the power of data to drive law firm negotiations, instead of being idle price takers that are subjected to consistent rate increases. 

Moving the Needle on Diversity with Data

Companies are holding a magnifying glass towards the diversity of their external partners as a result of the overdue and important conversation on racial injustices in America. 

In-house legal departments are looking for concrete data on timekeepers and allocation or origination credit from their law firms that demonstrates their true, honest commitment to diversity and inclusion. 

But it’s not an easy road to obtain this information.

Due to the limitations of their tech stacks, legal operations professionals must rely on their law firms to provide their diversity data — a request that’s almost always refuted.

This leaves legal operations teams struggling to control law firm behaviors and set specific guidelines on outside counsel diversity. 

Data-Backed Insights

With unparalleled data-backed insights, Bodhala can be a critical partner in guiding your legal department’s key initiatives — from diversity to spend optimization, law firm management, enhanced reporting, and more.

As the leading legal technology platform, Bodhala is built on data – and how we develop it, how we utilize it and how we analyze it for the benefit of our customers sets us apart.

Bodhala’s legal market intelligence arms legal departments with the ability to: initiate data-driven negotiations with outside counsel, set outside counsel guidelines that align with the businesses’ core values, benchmark their law firm rates to understand what they’re paying compared to peers in the market, and search data categorized by firmographics.

The combination of our analytics and legal market intelligence has made us experts in diversity spend data. As a result, we’ve helped our clients direct spend to diverse attorneys, monitor origination credit and relationship partner data, and identify diverse counsel for individual matters.

Real transparency, real accountability, real control — that’s what Bodhala is all about.

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Get in touch with our team of legal billing and data experts to find out how Bodhala can transform your legal department.

In recent months, companies have accelerated their diversity and inclusion initiatives as a result of the Black Lives Matter movement and the overdue conversation on racial injustices in America.

While companies have realized the work must start from within, they’re also holding critical external partners – including law firms – to higher standards.

This afternoon Bodhala CEO, Raj Goyle, led General Counsels and Chief Legal Officers across multiple industries through insightful conversations on the critical role data plays in driving diversity initiatives during Consero’s Virtual KnowledgeBridge.

As the leading legal technology platform, Bodhala is built on data – and how we develop it, how we utilize it and how we analyze it for the benefit of our customers sets us apart.

Our analytics and market intelligence have made us experts in diversity spend data as we have helped clients:

• Identify and source diverse counsel for individual matters and panels
• Direct spend to diverse attorneys on the partnership path
• Monitor origination credit and relationship partner data

Here’s What We Heard

Throughout this afternoon’s discussions, Consero attendees expressed their desire to get beyond the virtue signaling and window dressing that law firms so often display when it comes to diversity. 

Though legal departments are at various stages in their innovation journeys, attendees shared the following actions their legal departments have taken:

• Identification of diverse attorneys at the associate level that can be supported through the partnership track
• Request of diversity metrics during the RFP process
• Implementation of technology that can improve data visualization in order to better track diversity
• Utilization of boutique law firms that employ more diverse lawyers

Bodhala’s Insights

Law firms will not change their antics unless they are held accountable by their clients. Companies can no longer rely on obsolete numbers in a survey or empty law firm promises when it comes to diversity. After all, you cannot manage what you don’t measure.

To ensure accountability, companies must leverage data and monitor origination credit. Origination credit determines who at the law firm gets a significant percentage of money for a client’s work. No progress can be made on diversity initiatives without the client’s understanding of the critical role origination credit plays in diverse lawyers achieving equity partner status within their firms. 

Is your organization equipped with the data you need to initiate change and tip the scale on critical diversity efforts?

Bodhala is your partner for generating data-backed insights that can accelerate your company’s diversity journey.

With over $15 billion in legal invoices from over 235,000 timekeepers spread across over 30,000 law firms, Bodhala equips you with the data needed to hire the right lawyer at the right law firm at the right price.

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Get in touch with our team of legal billing and data experts to find out how Bodhala can transform your legal department.

Innovative legal ops professionals are changing the landscape of legal spend management.  Here’s what they’re doing:

Leveraging data: If your legal department is like most, anecdotal commentary reigns supreme. However, it’s the data that is most effective in evaluating your outside firms and identifying those most integral to the business. Highlighting your top performing law firms, your most utilized timekeepers and the practice areas with the highest spend is the first step to driving tangible discussion with your stakeholders. Data is the language of your CFO and board, and it speaks volumes about the details of your legal spend at large.  

Driving the details that matter: Law firm annual rate increases are routinely scrutinized by legal ops professionals, but these details are superficial and only tell part of the spend story. Leveraging modern technology that surfaces the granularities of your department’s outside counsel utility and spend will provide insights that:

• Distinguish between routine and ‘bet the business’ work
• Identify billing patterns associated with historical relationships and practice areas
• Track YoY rate increases and ongoing billing practices of your timekeepers by matter type

Detailed analysis that considers both quantitative and qualitative variables is an indication of a performant legal operation and enables you to present opportunities to the GC and CFO with credibility.

Partnering with finance: You might work for the GC, but the CFO should be considered a strategic partner. The most highly functioning legal departments are viewed as strategic spend centers, not cost-centers, and shifting this perspective is the first step to aligning with your CFO. Developing a data-backed spend framework that accurately tiers your legal matters and enables you to leverage your top legal talent with efficiency sets the foundation for outcome-based collaboration and long-term success. 

How is your legal department driving change?  

This afternoon Bodhala CEO, Raj Goyle, led legal operations leaders from financial services and insurance companies through a series of interactive and informative conversations on how to leverage data, machine learning and analytics to manage legal spend.

Common Challenges

1. Legal operations professionals want to drive meaningful conversations around their outside counsel spend and relationships, but lack the clean data that is needed to do so. Attendees shared that they are turning to data to be calculated and efficient in their departments’ operations as it is the single source of truth behind the legal department’s spend narrative. Without data, they struggle to:

• Negotiate better prices with their law firms
• Forecast future spend
• Distinguish between run of the mill and “bet-the-business” matters
• Influence internal ideals around law firm relationships and value

1. Legal departments are honing in on panel firm management. Attendees are executing this by monitoring spend, matters handled, performance, value provided, and whether their firm hit or exceeded budget. Some attendees noted the high volume of firms being utilized to handle their businesses’ matters, that number being upwards of 500 for some. They are intently focused on bringing that number down by determining which firms and partners are their “LeBrons” — the legal talent most pivotal to their critical matters.
2. Though diversity has been a key initiative of many attendees’ legal departments for several years, the need to move the needle on this front has accelerated in recent months. Attendees shared that it has been a struggle to get their law firms to adhere to their D&I standards as they are hesitant – or even refuse – to provide information on their firm’s diversity. To hold firms towards a higher standard, attendees noted that they are regularly evaluating their outside counsel and turning the lens on their internal operations as well to show that their business is practicing what they preach.
3. With the unexpected circumstances Covid has presented, change management is another key focus area for legal ops professionals. But as attendees noted, lawyers are not only hesitant, but resistant to change. Attendees shared that the global crisis has forced them to focus on improving the efficiency and effectiveness of their law firms, especially as they anticipate a “tsunami” of work requiring legal expertise over the course of the next six months.

How Bodhala Can Revolutionize Your Legal Operations

Today’s legal industry is undergoing a data revolution. With the power of AI-driven data enhancement, Bodhala’s trailblazing proprietary platform allows legal departments to identify trends and utilize these insights to make more strategic business decisions.

With over $15 billion in legal invoices from over 235,000 timekeepers spread across over 30,000 law firms, Bodhala equips you with the data needed to hire the right lawyer at the right law firm at the right price.

Our unparalleled legal market intelligence arms legal departments with the ability to: benchmark their law firm rates to understand what they’re paying compared to peers in the market, search data categorized by firmographics, discover nuanced solutions and best practices for managing outside counsel spend, and initiate data-driven negotiations with outside counsel. 

Serving some of the world’s leading insurance carriers and financial institutions, Bodhala has enabled clients to initiate data-driven conversations both internally and externally. With Bodhala, corporate legal departments have the power to justify their objections, negotiations, and decisions.

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Get in touch with our team of legal billing and data experts to find out how Bodhala can transform your legal department.

There’s one silent force driving strategic decisions in every single industry…except legal. 

Data. 

The legal industry has historically shied away from data, resulting in significant inefficiencies and posing challenges for their business. But the legal industry’s data reckoning is upon us – and the enlightened are already experiencing outsized benefits.

Whether you’re building new products or streamlining operations, data is the key to impactful decisions. With 2021 on the horizon, data is no longer a luxury item for corporate legal — it’s a necessity. Departments have no choice but to think about how they can leverage analytics to make strategic decisions that will optimize spend and contribute to their bottom line.

This is particularly critical amidst the global economic crisis caused by Covid-19. With some businesses – and even entire industries – hit harder than ever before, the impact of the pandemic will have repercussions that last well into 2021 (and likely longer). There is an urgent need for data as executives around the world are desperate for better performance at lower prices.

When attempting to rein in spend, legal departments typically start by looking to their eBiller for the requisite data but are consistently disappointed. While great at managing invoices, eBillers were not built to deliver granular analyses. Relying on your eBiller to surface actionable insights is a fool’s errand. But when used in conjunction with platforms like Bodhala, purpose-built for legal data analysis and insights, the results are eye-opening.  

At Bodhala, we find that legal departments are often overpaying for their outside counsel, especially when benchmarked against relevant competitors in the market. As your outside counsel begins to circulate their annual rate increases, what insights are you leveraging to ensure you’re receiving a fair price? 

Transparency has never been at the heart of the legal services market – but that’s changing rapidly. Companies are demanding market transparency around rates and staffing, and for departments smart enough to jump on the innovation bandwagon early, they’re seeing significant ROI. The results go beyond only rate-driven savings, with companies also reaping the benefits of improved firm selection, optimized staffing, and decreased block billing – to name a few.

To effectively manage your spend and cut costs, you need to think strategically – and to truly think strategically, you need data. Without it, it’s an uphill battle to determine where your priorities should lie. 

Ask yourself this: Do I have the data I need to make truly strategic decisions as I plan for 2021? Have I consistently spent more in a particular practice area? Am I paying partner rates for associate-level work? Which law firms are pivotal to my businesses’ matters? 

Optimizing spend depends on an awareness of where opportunities for improvement lie. These are insights that only data can surface.

So, how prepared do you feel for 2021? 

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Get in touch with our team of legal billing and data experts to find out how Bodhala can transform your legal department.

This afternoon, Bodhala participated in Consero’s Legal Operations virtual conference.

Bodhala CEO, Raj Goyle, led legal operations leaders across industries through a series of conversations on how to drive impact within their legal departments amidst COVID, the techniques legal departments are implementing to adjust for the future and save money, and how in-house teams can push their diversity initiatives both internally and externally.

Here are our key takeaways:

Data is driving how law firms are managed.

• With the challenges 2020 has presented, legal operations professionals are looking to utilize data to manage law firm relationships. But it can be challenging to know where to begin, especially if the data is messy. Attendees expressed the need for convincing and compelling data that can initiate conversations on law firm selection, rate cards, bill reviews, number of firms utilized, overall spend, and more. Take a look at our recent whitepaper to understand how our clients’ legal operations teams have leveraged data during COVID.

Finance is closely tracking legal spend.

• As companies continue to grapple with the economic effects of COVID, it’s no surprise that finance departments are examining invoices and legal spend with heightened scrutiny. The pressure to cut costs is on as attendees noted increased interaction with their finance teams, sharing that every nickel and dime going out the door is being tracked and invoices over a specific cost threshold are being questioned. Learn about Bodhala’s suggested techniques for handling law firm payables during COVID.

Diversity standards are being set internally and externally.

• The urgent, overdue conversation on racial injustices in America has led corporate legal departments to not only turn the lens on themselves, but on their law firms as well. Attendees noted their efforts to examine the diversity (or lack thereof) of the lead attorneys at their panel firms, gather data to track the diversity of the timekeepers handling their matters, and collaborate with their Chief Diversity Officers on moving the needle on key initiatives. As law firms are hesitant to comply with requests for diversity data, clients must track origination credit as this is what can truly improve diversity in the legal profession.

Bodhala’s Insights

Whether you’re looking to cut costs, improve your department’s decision-making process, or drive key diversity initiatives – are you armed with the data needed to do so?

Bodhala is reimagining the legal services market place by providing legal market intelligence, insights, and guidance to corporations to optimize their legal operations. 

From top timekeepers to average hourly rates, and everything in between, all you need to know about your outside counsel spend and law firm staffing is housed in your data. 

Bodhala equips you with the data needed to hire the right lawyer at the right law firm at the right price.

Our platform’s insights have enabled clients to initiate data-driven conversations both internally and externally. With Bodhala, corporate legal departments have the power to justify their objections, negotiations, and decisions as they relate to legal spend, law firm selection, and diversity goals.

Bodhala’s Resources 

We’re here to help you find efficiencies in your company’s legal spend – speak with a Bodhala legal expert about legal spend management tactics.

This afternoon, Bodhala participated in Consero’s virtual conference – Legal Operations for Financial Services and Insurance: What’s Next for Legal Ops?

Bodhala CEO, Raj Goyle, led legal operations leaders from financial services and insurance companies through conversations on how our clients have leveraged our platform’s data throughout the COVID crisis, where gaps may lie in their current analytics tools, and how peer departments across industries are utilizing data to drive decisions and change.

Here are some of the key takeaways from the sessions:

Data drives action.

• As echoed throughout the conference, legal operations professionals depend on data to drive conversation and action within their legal departments. Several attendees noted issues with the “dirty data” other systems produce. One attendee, a Director of Legal, noted that a lack of clean data has left his legal department unaware of what actions to take when it comes to spend and outside counsel relationships. As a result, his team approves all rate cards submitted by law firms without even giving it a second thought. Without context behind data and true apples-to-apples comparisons, in-house legal departments are left to play guessing games when it comes to outside counsel rates.

Let lawyers focus on lawyering.

• The COVID crisis has led companies to evaluate every single line item in their budget with heightened scrutiny. As corporate legal departments look to contain costs, many attendees noted that managing relationships with outside counsel is critical. Throughout the conversation, attendees cited the various “key players” they bring in to handle the financial relationships with their outside counsel, including general counsels, legal operations, and procurement. This has allowed their in-house attorneys to focus on mission-critical work rather than handling law firm negotiations. Attendees have turned to data to evaluate their law firm relationships to determine the value these firms are providing for the rates that are being paid. One Legal Operations Manager shared that she has started to pry her in-house team with the following question, “If a firm cannot adhere to the outside counsel guidelines, are you prepared to break the relationship?” Another attendee, a COO, added that he recently downsized his company’s number of law firms from 300 to 30 over 18 months to optimize spend.

Sophisticated technology delivers real results.

• As the maturity of each legal department varies, so does the sophistication of the technology they use. Other tools, such as e-billers and Tableau, can only go so far when delivering data and analyses. A Managing Director and Deputy COO shared that e-billers are limited by a lack of financial acumen which makes rate management a difficult task. Another attendee, a Head of Global Operations, noted that e-billers are only as good as the data you put into them, adding that they are “flat-files” that do not operate on sophisticated algorithms, as Bodhala does.

Bodhala’s Insights

Bodhala is reimagining the legal services market place by providing legal market intelligence, insights, and guidance to corporations to optimize their legal operations. 

From top timekeepers to average hourly rates, and everything in between, all you need to know about your outside counsel spend and law firm staffing is housed in your data. 

We arm you with the data needed to hire the right lawyer at the right law firm at the right price.

Here’s how our client’s legal operations teams have leveraged our Bodhala’s data and guidance recently:

Client A

Challenge: An insurance carrier was utilizing thousands of firms, but didn’t have a sustainable way to provide meaningful feedback on firm cost and quality on a regular cadence.

Action Taken: Bodhala instructed their corporate legal department to use Bodhala scorecards to score their most used firms, creating true apples-to-apples comparisons that could be shared with the law firms.

Client B

Challenge: A financial institution’s law firm rates were consistently increasing above inflation. The company’s legal team did not have the capacity to negotiate rates while collaborating on mission-critical work.

Action Taken: Initiated the handoff of rate card negotiations to finance and procurement, joining a number of leading companies that allow their legal departments to focus on being lawyers.

Hercules, “the god of analytics” is Bodhala’s trailblazing proprietary database that operates as a single source of truth for legal data, and provides our clients with a 360° view of the legal market.

Running on Hercules, the Bodhala platform has an intuitive dashboard that analyzes:

• Rates
• Observed discount percentages at relationship and practice area/work type level (anonymized)
• Matter types
• Factors that create peer sets, providing accurate apples-to-apples comparisons of cost and staffing

Our platform’s insights have enabled clients to initiate data-driven conversations both internally and externally. With Bodhala, corporate legal departments have the power to justify their objections, negotiations, and decisions as they relate to legal spend and law firm selection.

Bodhala’s Resources

We’re here to help you find efficiencies in your company’s legal spend – speak with a Bodhala legal expert about legal spend management tactics. Our team will provide advice on how to communicate with law firms, how to renegotiate, and what to look for in your law firms. Sign up for your complimentary consultation.

Since the start of the COVID crisis, we have posed the following question to our clients – How is your law firm sharing in your economic pain?

Looks like we were right in doing so.

According to a recent Financial Times article, private equity firm, KKR, asked its law firms, which include the likes of Simpson Thacher & Bartlett, to “share in their economic pain” by providing discounts of at least 15% on work completed this year.

This, coming from one of the most prominent consumers of complex law firm work, shows that law firms can no longer avoid the negative economic effects of a crisis.

This has set the trend for other private equity firms to follow.

Despite initially calling the request “galling” and “outrageous,” most advisers have accepted KKR’s request.

Many Bodhala clients have made similar requests to their law firms. This goes to show that even long-term law firm relationships are at risk if these firms are unwilling to participate in ceding some profits on rates – especially when those rates have increased at above-inflation for decades, as shown through our contribution to this WSJ article.

As “The Great Retrade” has taken shape across industries, this news did not come as a surprise to Bodhala.

From the real estate industry to airlines, insurance, and hospitals – companies have carefully reevaluated and retraded every line item in their budgets in an effort to stay afloat amidst the chaos.

Historically, law firms have sheltered themselves from the negative effects of past crises. From the dot-com collapse to the 9/11 terrorist attacks to the 2009 Financial Crisis, law firms emerged unscathed from the crushing impacts these events had on our economy.

Bodhala predicted that things would be different this time around.

And so far, we have been correct.

Even the most prominent private equity firms, regardless of their balance sheets, are experiencing cost pressures due to the economic slow-down, and they are demanding that their business partners share in the burden.

KKR’s request to law firms came from CFO, Robert Lewin, as the private equity firm has spent roughly $18 billion on deals since February 2019.

After reporting a net loss of $4.2 billion in their first quarter of 2020, KKR was left with few options but to direct their cash conservation efforts towards their law firms.

And they’re not alone in doing so.

As corporate legal departments try to optimize their spend, law firms are receiving more and more “IOUs” from their clients.

Heading into the second quarter of the year, law firms projected an 8% lengthening in collections as their clients carefully monitored their accounts payable.

Since the start of the economic downturn, Bodhala has fielded client requests for data-backed insights on how to handle their law firm payables during COVID.

It appears the following advice we have offered our clients is reverberating across corporate legal departments:

• Renegotiate fees and freeze your rate cards
• Examine law firm invoices with heightened scrutiny
• Run matter RFPs to explore high-quality alternative firms at lower rates
• Hold off on paying your legal bills
• Ask for higher broken deal discounts
• Freeze staffing on litigation
• Evaluate your law firm’s economic health

KKR’s request is resetting the market, leading us to ask:

If one of the largest private equity firms in the world is safe-guarding their legal spend, shouldn’t you be doing the same?

Bodhala’s groundbreaking legal technology platform provides the data needed to optimize your spend on outside counsel.

Across industries, our clients have leveraged our platform’s insights to drive real, actionable change within their legal departments.

To help you with these issues we have created this free form letter for you to download to start the conversation with your law firms.

Subscribe to our blog to stay up-to-date on our follow-up content, including advice on how to handle law firm objections.

As corporate legal departments deal with the effects of COVID and begin to address the potential long-term impact on their business, Bodhala’s team of legal experts presented a complimentary webinar to guide attendees through various cost optimization strategies.

Hosted by Ketan Jhaveri, Bodhala’s President, and Chris Bennett, VP of Strategy, the pair dove into the challenges our clients have faced throughout the crisis and how they leveraged data and Bodhala’s platform to pivot accordingly.

From real estate to airlines, insurance to hospitals, we have witnessed “The Great Retrade” take shape across industries as companies try to conserve cash.

Jhaveri and Bennett explained that, historically, law firms have sheltered themselves from the negative impacts of crises, continually charging inflated fees while other industries suffer immensely. 

So why does this matter to you?

“With the shift in supply and demand, you need to keep a watchful eye on the billing practices conducted by your panel firms,” noted Bennett. It is now more important than ever for general counsels and legal operations professionals to protect their business from financial oversight and poor panel firm management.

Jhaveri posed the following question to the audience, “How is this downturn impacting your law firms and your work being handled by those firms,” adding “If they’re hounding you for an unpaid invoice, it’s likely things need to change.”

Data is the key to driving this change.

At Bodhala, we’re providing legal departments with the data they need to not only optimize their spend, but to justify it. 

Jhaveri added, “Law is not always about getting the lowest price – you do pay for quality and accessibility – but it is also about allocation and ensuring you’re hiring the right lawyer at the right law firm at the right price.”

Our team identified seven keys areas where general counsels and legal operations professionals leverage data to manage cost pressures within their legal departments, including:

1. Rate Cards
2. Matter RFPs
3. Litigation
4. Broken M&A Deals
5. Law Firm Health
6. Invoice Payments
7. Bill Review

Here are some interesting discussion points from the webinar:

1. Bodhala client’s success with benchmarking

Our benchmarking methodology is based upon clustering – using like comparisons that can be measured against one another. With benchmarking, we arm clients with the information needed to start a data-driven conversation with their law firm. This drives clients towards the value they see fit and allows them to negotiate better rates by benchmarking their law firm against those of similar caliber. Recently, a Bodhala client leveraged our benchmarking capabilities to drive down the cost of a premier partner that they had been utilizing for years.

2. Bodhala enhances LEDES files

The Legal Electronic Data Exchange Standard (LEDES) file was developed over two decades ago with the purpose of providing a standard data format for electronic invoices. While LEDES files serve their purpose of getting invoices paid, they provide no insights on spend or how to manage relationships with outside counsel. At Bodhala, we have created a data transformation team that ingests invoice data in the platform and transforms the data in a meaningful way that allows clients to make true apples-to-apples comparisons and provide actionable insights to their departments. 

3. Bodhala’s approach to UTBMS coding

Uniform Task-Based Management System (UTBMS) codes were created to standardize the categorization of legal work and expenses; however, they can be problematic. After evaluating UTBMS codes within insurance and finance clients, we have noticed that these codes have a multitude of gaps and overlaps. This led our team to create our own litigation AI model to apply the proper UTBMS codes to clients’ data. At best, UTBMS codes submitted by law firms are 60% accurate – our model performs with 99% accuracy.

4. Bodhala’s diversity functionalities

The law has historically been the least diverse, white-collar profession in the country. Five years ago, Bodhala launched a product allowing our clients to track which lawyers are handling their matters and their origination credit. Our clients are looking to drive actionable change in their law firm relationships.

To learn more about implementing these changes, you can check out our webinar recording here or download our most recent whitepapers, Legal Operations: Time to Shine and General Counsels: Taking the Lead.