Legal Departments in Law Firms

For Katherine Woods, assistant general counsel at facilities management and professional services firm Mitie Group, one of the most significant changes that has impacted the structure of internal services over the past five to ten years is the company-wide recognition of its core and strategic business function. Finally, firms with ongoing litigation requirements should seek to consolidate and use court reporter services where permitted, rather than relying on the hiring of outside counsel. However, hiring these independent, experienced and essential professionals by law firms on a case-by-case basis limits progress in innovation and efficiency and ineffectively engages the firm with the third-party administration. Similarly, state “anti-contract” laws designed to ensure the independence of independent court reporters by prohibiting pre-negotiated agreements unfortunately further fragment the field, making it more difficult to scale up improvements. Holland & Knight`s legal profession team has the deep knowledge, extensive experience and sincere commitment to providing the world-class service that lawyers and law firms deserve to meet their specific needs across the legal industry. Legal errors: Unfortunately, claims against law firms are inevitably part of the business, but our team helps lawyers and law firms identify and process potential claims and defend existing claims. Our team of lawyers played a pivotal role in creating the main treatise on legal errors as authors, advising clients in cases ranging from proactive defense to high-profile cases. When it comes to hiring, developing and retaining top talent, corporate legal departments must compete with law firms and the public sector, even though many law graduates do not consider in-house positions to be their first choice (Figure 5). Many rightly believe that promotions within a legal department can be rare. Increasingly, mid- and senior-level positions are now filled by lawyers in private practice. This mostly one-sided traffic from private practice to industry means that many qualified individuals can compete for an open position, making it increasingly difficult for in-house lawyers to climb the ladder. “This has allowed us to offer a range of opportunities to our colleagues, with the clear objective that there should be a development pathway that allows someone who comes to us as a paralegal to one day access to general counsel,” he says.

The second major change in the empowerment of business consultants has been the inevitable integration of business rigor and analysis into legal services. Although the global financial crisis was an accelerator of the rise of legal transactions (the third phase of the development of legal services, see below), this intermediary, although stealthy, made a second change in the 90s until the 2008 financial crisis successfully and irrevocably used outsourced talent to help companies` legal departments with due diligence and discovery reviews. Insurance: Effective risk management by law firms reduces the risk of damage and liability and thus improves insurability. However, even the most “insurable” company must invest heavily to transfer its inevitable risks of error and omission to the insurance market. The resulting coverage is an asset that can and should be maximized. Our national insurance team has helped numerous professional associations, including law firms, maximize available coverage and help clients develop and implement insurance solutions that extend coverage and increase profitability across states. When claims arise, our team offers professional corporate clients representation that maximizes the insurance benefits available to them. For Woods, improving access to temporary resources and on-demand legal talent was a significant change. ALSPs “offer other ways to support in-house legal resources and can be flexible to meet demand,” she says.

One area that has always been a top priority in the structure of in-house legal teams is improving recruit diversity to encourage the recruitment and retention of women, LGBTQ+ and disability lawyers, and lawyers with underrepresented racial and ethnic backgrounds. Finding the right person for the job, arguably the most important task of an attorney general, is complicated by the aforementioned changes in the legal ecosystem. While legal departments could previously choose from pre-selected law firm boards for assistance on specific issues, today a much broader range of services (e.g., digitally supported legal services, legal technology, insourcing providers, and litigation finance). Legal advisors need to learn how to use these services (Figure 3). In many ways, an in-house legal operations team mimics the operational teams of outside law firms that have benefited for decades from the separation of their lawyers from the firm`s day-to-day operations. For example, you typically don`t see partners in law firms working on implementing the technology or setting up the billing process. If there is any nirvana for in-house counsel, it is the provision of quality legal services at lower cost and with better results. Typically, you can solve one part of the equation, but only at the expense of the other parts. In recent years, hope has emerged in the form of legal operations, a discipline that focuses on the “unique” idea of treating in-house legal departments like any other part of the business. In addition to data analytics and legal procurement, legal operations are among the top three best practices increasingly used by savvy legal departments of all sizes. This article explains how litigation can help in-house lawyers increase efficiency, reduce costs, and achieve better outcomes.

According to a 2021 study by Thomson Reuters, ALSPs have “accelerated their growth to reach a global market share of nearly $14 billion and are rapidly becoming a mainstream segment of the legal market.” One approach to defining a functional objective is to compare business activities and priorities with how in-house counsel spend their time and where they go. Should the legal department focus more on drafting complex commercial contracts for new projects, managing external lawyers to handle mass litigation, or responding to day-to-day requests? Revell has seen a significant increase in in-house attorneys` instructions over the past five to ten years, measured by revenue, saying, “Clients still use law firms!” In times of limited financial resources to attract talent and differentiate themselves, legal business leaders create a more stimulating work environment for young professionals – for example, by building interdisciplinary teams of data scientists, forensic scientists, and external consultants. Many also offer more attractive working conditions, including flexible working hours and part-time models. Legal Operations is the same idea and a broad term in the internal context.