Over at Exari, it’s a different Adam
Smith. OK, I couldn’t resist, but this gives me an opportunity
to briefly flag the importance of automating routine tasks which
corporate counsel will increasingly resist paying for. Document
assembly, whether through Exari or a more familiar name-brand, Thomson-Elite,
is clearly a baseline example.
The ABA Journal discusses a
far more strenuous example: Cisco System’s insistence on
cost-savings from its law firms. According to Cisco’s general
counsel Mark Chandler, 75% of the $70-million/year they spend on
outside counsel is now billed on a fixed-fee basis, and he wants
that only to increase. Like
it or not, automation will be a large part of any firm’s answer
to the question Cisco continually poses, which is along the lines
of "If you could do it for $10,000 last year, can you do it for
$8,500 this year?" Two firms that have risen to the
occasion are McGuire Woods with its "ContractBuilder" database
of templates, and Reed Smith with its online HIPAA compliance tool. (It
cost Reed Smith a fixed amount to build the tool, and clients can
rent it for a fixed amount.)
Nor is Cisco exactly passive when it comes to driving technology-based
cost savings internally:
- Through its "Click Accept" digital signature technology, it
has enabled 6-million online signatures to date at a savings
of $10-million. - Partnering with Eversheds, it developed an online training
and "e-learning" suite of applications on how to comply with
employment laws in a host of countries. - By migrating all its internal emails and documents to a new
database—one specifically designed in contemplation of
the burdens of e-discovery—it was able to dodge an estimated
$9-million expense (the lowest bid by an outside EDD firm) for
discovery in an unspecified piece of litigation, and cut its
internal costs of compliance to $900,000. Admittedly it
cost $1.5-million to build the database, but as Chandler correctly
points out, "this is the gift that keeps on giving."
Technology is not the answer to everything, of course; sometimes
it pays just to look outside Silicon Valley for legal resources. Laura
Owen, director of legal services, says Cisco approached some Midwest
firms for their lower overheads and billing rates and while several
were receptive, others reacted to Cisco’s expectations with "Very
interesting…but no thanks."
Understand that what Cisco is doing today the rest of the Fortune
500 will be doing tomorrow. Cause for alarm? Not for
a moment; do you really want to take highly competitive, verbal,
analytic, expensive professionals and set them to the task of
explaining for the umpteenth time the worker compensation system
in the UK? There’s
a reason they call it commodity work, and it’s not what you really
want to do, is it? Cisco happens to agree with you.
