When I was a junior associate working at a firm in Amsterdam the partner I worked for would stride into my office and ask me for a memo about a specific topic. He would add: “I don’t need a whole dissertation. English is fine. Tomorrow 9.00 AM is early enough.”
You can see how that would leave room for misunderstandings of what exactly was expected of me besides the clear expectation I would work on it all night. For sure a few rounds of back-and-forth about the memo could have been avoided if the partner had spent five minutes explaining the background of his request.
The same is true when you instruct a law firm as in-house counsel. With the most important difference that you are paying by the hour for any confusion you are causing.
It stands to reason that an enormous amount time and money can be saved when you learn to ask law firms exactly what you want them to do; and what not to do. More money than you will save with all other efforts combined is my expectation.
Having said that, I do sympathize. Scoping what you need from a law firm, can be tricky. I learned this when I was practicing in Hong Kong and had to instruct local counsel on behalf of an overseas client. The in itself simple question: ‘is this allowed under the law’ would sometimes get the answer “No”. Clear, but most of the time not really helpful. But if I was not clear enough, I’d receive an e-mail that would start with “The law was first implemented in 1889 with the intention…..”.
A few pointers on getting your scoping right.
1. Get in the habit of scoping everything that goes out to outside counsel
However carefully you formulate your request to a law firm, misunderstandings are likely to sneak in. It is unlikely that everything we ask of law firms is always immediately perfectly understood. However, the more you get in the habit of sending precise scopes to law firms when requesting their services, the better the scopes will get. Firms will not be shy to tell you why they read what you wrote the way they did. Use that input to improve on the scope for next time. The more you get in the habit, the better the scopes will get while at the same time, the firms you use will understand better what you mean each time.
Start with the types of service requests you send out most. Having a solid standard scope will allow you to quickly get quotes for the work you need regularly. Before you know it, the firms you like working with, will understand instantly what you need at what price when they received the scope.
2. Let firms know what you already know
Understandably when instruction a law firm, in-house counsel is likely to focus on what gaps in knowledge the law firm needs to fill. We have this situation, and now we don’t know whether we should be worried about so-and-so; and maybe other things we had not even considered.
The problem with this kind of request is that the law firm cannot mindread and will not know what exactly you have already considered. Before you know it the firm dives into a detailed analysis of a topic you already deemed irrelevant to the situation. Adding to the request that you considered it irrelevant and why will achieve two things: if the firm agrees it is not an issue in this situation, it will not waste any time on explaining why. If they think you dismissed the issue to quickly, they can comment on that fact and tell you why.
3. Don’t be shy to include your expectations about price
The fastest way to get to the bottom of a misunderstanding about the scope of an issue, is to tell a firm what your expectations are about how much an engagement should costs.
There is really no downside in including the range of spend you have in mind for an engagement. It will force the firm to think up front about what the topics they need to cover and how they could do that within the expected spend. This alone will already help with containing the costs. In addition, the firm will for sure let you know if they think it cannot be done (remotely) within the expected spend range. And with that message, they will let you know why. The problem is likely to be bigger than you thought originally. And that is important information to have as well.
Just so you know: If you use the CounselOps application, as part of the onboarding, we’ll support you in drafting the scopes for your most common service requests. We will use our experience to get you scopes that work and they will be available in your company’s scope library to use.