Nathan Cemenska, director of legal operations and industry insights at Wolters Kluwer’s ELM Solutions, says that complex billing guidelines coupled with the mounting workloads of in-house professionals erodes the effectiveness of e-billing solutions. Here, he provides some useful advice on maximizing e-billing ROI without dumping more work on law departments already slammed with too much to do.
Continue Reading E-Billing Is No Panacea for Law Departments
Barnes & Thornburg’s Jared Applegate discusses challenges and ideas for gathering and using data.
CCBJ: Both law firms and in-house law departments look to gain pricing certainty from a better understanding of data related to matters. What type of data should be focused upon?
Jared Applegate: From an in-house law department perspective and, frankly, from a law firm perspective, I think you always want to start with the end in mind. Ask these questions: At the end of the day, what business decisions will be driven by the capture and analysis of the data? Will that ultimately provide greater value/insights to my business unit leaders?
Continue Reading Capture Pricing Data with the End in Mind
Transparency and collaboration are obvious keys to strong and smooth relationships between inside and outside counsel. Less obvious is the role budgets can play in facilitating such relationships. Here, Jared Applegate of Barnes & Thornburg and Justin Ergler of GlaxoSmithKline share best practices on using budgets as a conversational tool to build better relationships.
Continue Reading Budgets as Conversational Touchstones