Optimising Costs by Improving Outside Counsel Management

The organisation’s CEO set firm-wide cost-cutting targets for all departments to drive profitability after a tough financial year. The VP of Legal turned to Gartner for support in developing a cost-cutting strategy without compromising quality of work. Gartner insights, tools and advisory support helped the VP right-size work for his department and reduce outside counsel spend.

Mission-critical priority

Due to the budget target set for all departments, the client focused on optimising costs by reducing outside counsel spend and collaborating with business partners to prioritise legal services on the highest-value work. As a result, legal was the only department to meet the 20% target.

How Gartner helped

Gartner provided comprehensive support via multiple rounds of advisor thought partnership, tools and research, including our outside counsel evaluation tool and our new legal operating model research. Our support highlights not just Gartner’s resources on outside counsel management, but also our deep expertise in how successful legal leaders drive process and workload management efficiencies.

Mission accomplished

With Gartner for Legal & Compliance Leaders, the client achieved: a faster, higher-quality strategy to rationalise work sent to outside counsel and reduce work unnecessarily completed by the legal department; reduced outside counsel spend by securing the right support for the right cost; business partner approval to prioritise legal services on highest-value work; and cost-cutting of more than 20%. 

Industry:
Energy

Revenue:
Approx. $10 billion

Employees:
> 11,000

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