Use Legal Case Management Systems To Bring Legal Work Back In-house
As economic conditions continue to be tough, corpoprate counsel are looking to save money by bringing legal work back home. This makes considerable sense financially: Professional newspaper, The Lawyer reports that “magic circle” associates now receive more than partners were in 2005, whereas hourly rates for city law firms are now between £180 and £550 an hour; far higher than the cost per hour of an in-house laywer.
In the real world, of course, its not as easy as that: legal work is frequently outsourced in the first place due to scarcity of organizational capacity, or because client cases are too convoluted to be handled time-efficiently by the in-house team.
But apply yourself to the insourcing challenge correctly and the results are very positive. At the Law Society’s inaugural In House Counsel event last year, there was a very interesting debate on “Ensuring effective use of legal resources and reducing costs”. One of the speakers was talking about the gains relating to returning work to in-house teams, saying that it let teams give a best value service to their organizations, use their expert knowledge on a wider range of cases and get their teeth into the more interesting matters. The significance of this viewpoint should not be overlooked – happy staff are the people who stick with your organization.
The way in which legal work is insourced should be completed carefully. You may be aware of the Yerkes-Dodson law that states that above a certain point, the more “arousal” a person is subjected to the worse they perform.
So Should We Bring Legal Work In-house Or Not?
According to research commissioned by the Association of Corporate Counsel, an awful lot of organizations are going down this route, showing that lots of companies think it has much to offer. Case management software can do much both to free staff from background tasks and make the process of insourcing less painful.
Matter management software or case management systems deliver considerable benefits to in-house teams including:
- increased sharing and collaboration between colleagues and outside experts
- enable home working if required
- reduced time frames for handling matters and cases,
So join the trend and investigate case/matter management software today.