In this ever-changing and leaner economic environment, corporate legal departments expect outside counsel to deliver more effective and efficient legal services at a lower cost. Simultaneously, in-house counsel are investigating expense management initiatives as well as solutions for increasing efficiency and productivity. One way both are achieving these goals is by leveraging cutting-edge legal research technology.

This article shares tips that in-house and outside counsel can immediately and easily implement to control legal research costs, drive significant productivity, improve internal efficiencies, and connect legal research to value-based billing.

1. Modern legal research technology enables you to conduct research significantly faster, to increase savings and reduce costs.

Attorneys who use modern legal research technology are able to be more efficient and productive. The increased efficiency means they bill fewer hours to the client and deliver dramatically better work-product faster and in a cost-effective way. This offers significant savings to the corporate client in the fees billed. While firms conducting traditional billable-hour work will bill fewer hours, firms seeking to gain market share can differentiate their service to their clients through quality, efficiency and cost-control. In this economic climate, firms will remain profitable. Clients can trust that they are not being billed for inefficient research, and they will increasingly expect firms to use modern legal research technologies to drive value-based billing. Whether a law firm employs modern technology is a consideration when scoring the efficiency/process management of a law firm under the ACC Value Index.

The research quantifying the improved efficiency that technology delivers is compelling. In March of 2010, Thomson Reuters hired the Legal Research Center to define and determine legal research tasks and then assigned these tasks to 100 attorneys. Fifty of the attorneys conducted the research assignments with the previous legal research technology and the other half used modern technology. The results were significant. Attorneys using modern research technology successfully completed assignments 64% faster – almost 3 times faster – than those who used the previous generation of research. Even more compelling is that the fifty attorneys who used the previous generation of research (PDF) were very familiar with it, but the fifty attorneys who used the modern research technology were unfamiliar with this research service and received only one hour of training prior to using it. In practice, these efficiencies and improved process management would benefit the client with lower bills, better research results and enhanced value.

2. Completing some research tasks in-house provides savings to the company.

Modern research technology empowers corporate law departments to answer some research questions in-house. Even shifting 1 to 5% of total outside counsel fees to the law department can provide significant savings. These savings could be applied in other areas of the business. As the outside counsel fees and their billable rates increase¸ so does the savings when some of the research is completed in-house.

At a recent conference, one general counsel indicated he conducts preliminary research on modern legal research technology. He then discusses the results with his outside counsel, explains what resources need to be found, and reviews the open issues that need to be researched. This efficient approach enables the company to not only catalyze greater productivity and communication, but also save legal research costs. Under these circumstances, outside counsel can better focus on high-value and complex matters, as well as specific issues the general counsel needs addressed.

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Reprinted with permission from the Association of Corporate Counsel