Kansas City-area companies keep legal work in house, negotiate fees - Business First of Columbus:

plesciamipukoa1855.blogspot.com
Slackening demand for outside legakl services has leftcorporate in-house counsel with more leverage in trying to controol costs with outside legal The need to keep costs low in the legal departmentg is a shopworn tradition in the in-house trade. “It’ws something that savvy inside counsekl have been dealing with Iwould guess,” said Joe managing partner of and formerr general counsel of the .
But in thesre economic times, outside firms apparently have becomwe more willing to listen to the idea of reducesd fees or alternativebilling arrangements, such as flat fees for projectws and success fees for victorious “I think in this type of they are more receptive to it,” said Julie senior attorney for “When the economy is greatt and the outside firmsw are getting a lot of work, they’re more apt to say: ‘Pa y our hourly rate, or we’rr not going to take you as our ... Now, the firms are strapped as well, and they’rr looking for work.
” External costs accoung for an average of 60 percengt of legaldepartment budgets, according to a recen t report by the Corporate Executive Board’s General Counsel Roundtable. That makeas spending on outside legal help a prime target forcost cuts. According to a Decembedr survey bythe , 79 percent of chief legapl officers and general counsels have taken stepd to increase efficiency or generate value for theid departments. The most common techniques are increasef use of supportstafdf (48 percent), contract management systems (44 percent), documenr management (43 percent) and alternatives fee arrangements (41 percent).
Some in-house counsels are opening the dooras to using different particularly if the law firms they work with have raisesd rates or are inflexible in adjustingftheir rates. “I am very cognizant of wherwe different law firms have taken theier rates over the last19 months,” said Matt general counsel for “Not surprisingly, I am less inclined to use firmsz that have made substantial increases in their ratez from 2008 to 2009.” Wiltanger said the company has become willing to look at more firme for its outside legal work in part because of fees but also based on needingh lawyers in other jurisdictions to handle litigation and projectd elsewhere.
Although staffing levels in most corporate legal departmentx haveremained steady, Shull said KCP&L’s in-houses staff is taking on more projects and litigation internallyt rather than dispatching it to outside firmz at a higher “For instance, property damager issues, small personal-injury cases, and we handlr our condemnation cases she said. Other measures include asking for fee discountss in the range of 10 percentf to 20 percent on rates inKansas City, which commonlg range from $150 to $400 an hour, or reviewingb bills for overbilling.
“If we feel like it’xs an unreasonable amount of time spent on a project and we may not andprobablu wouldn’t dispute that on the but what we may do is go back to our outside counsek (and ask), ‘In the future, can you keep that down or to a Shull said. Several Kansas City firm leaders said recentlg that alternative billing had not yet taken firm hold in the local market. But experts suggest that an ongoing recession may soon changw that in Kansas City as it has According to the ACC 77 percent of chief legal officersx and general counsels would like to see an increase in alternativefee arrangements.
“The consultants are out telling firms that they need to be doin this kindof thing,” said Frederico Krebs, president of the Association of Corporate “In some ways, and I hate to say but to a certain leveol of impediment is the in-house attorney, and they need to be ... There’s a certain comfort in the billabled hour, and they need to be willingg to move offof that, too.
” Yet, not all in-house counsekl suggest that outside legapl costs have become cumbersome, even thoughg revenue and income may get Kansas City-based , which oversees drug testing for large sportd organizations and the , is facing somewhat reduced revenue from clients peeling back on drug testinh as sponsorships drop.