The Modern Outside Counsel RFP Playbook

How legal departments select the right law firms with better data, better pricing and better outcomes.

Outside counsel is one of the largest controllable line items in most legal budgets, yet many teams still choose firms the way they did a decade ago: relationships, familiar names and spreadsheets buried in email. That approach is getting more scrutiny as finance, procurement and executive leadership ask for more visibility, more predictability and more proof of value.

This playbook lays out a practical framework for modernizing outside counsel sourcing without losing the relationships and legal judgment that drive every engagement. Whether you’re selecting counsel for a single high-stakes matter or refreshing a full preferred panel, you’ll get the structure, worksheets and checklists your team needs to make more informed, transparent and repeatable decisions.

In This Playbook, You’ll Learn:

• When an RFP earns its keep and when to skip the formal process
• Five myths that keep legal teams from running better RFPs
• How to ask smarter questions instead of longer ones
• How to evaluate firms on total value, not hourly rate
• What governance after selection should look like
• How to run the process on a realistic 10-week timelin

Also included

Four ready-to-use tools you can adapt for your own organization: an RFP readiness assessment, an evaluation weighting framework, a law firm scorecard and an outside counsel governance checklist.