Corporate Law Departments

Altman Weil provides comprehensive services to law departments worldwide including:

Law Department Alignment – To ensure that a law department is working at peak efficiency it must be aligned internally within the department on a number of key factors and externally with the strategic needs of the executives and business units it serves, as well as with the company as a whole.  Altman Weil’s law department experts can assess your department’s unique needs.

Cost Control – We will help you with cost control efforts, including the proper selection of outside providers, having the right tools to measure cost performance, billing strategies, use of alternative fee arrangements, and benchmarking data.  In addition, we will use our expertise to guide you in knowing where to reduce the budget without sacrificing critical support functions or incurring undue risk.

Outside Counsel – Our services include the selection, retention and ongoing evaluation of outside counsel. Specifically, this can include developing systems and policies to assure efficient and cost-effective use of outside counsel, including convergence, competitive bidding, alternative pricing strategies and billing systems.

Benchmarking and Best Practices – Altman Weil has access to extensive databases of quantitative and qualitative law department data that you can use to compare your department against comparable departments.  This unique resource enables you to evaluate your performance, develop future initiatives, and identify industry best practices.  We can assist you in developing the metrics that demonstrate the value of your law department.

Practices and Procedures – Creating or streamlining your processes and procedures for maximum effectiveness is essential to creating a world-class law department.  Altman Weil can assess your practices and policies and assist the department in installing the right tools.

Client Relations – We will help you enhance your client relationships by improving internal communications, developing preventive law programs and conducting client surveys.  Over the years, Altman Weil has created a client survey database with thousands of client responses that can be used to benchmark your results against the performance of other companies.

Inside/Outside Mix – Determining how much legal work outside counsel should handle and how much should be kept in-house is a key ingredient to success.  One model does not fit all companies and we can help you find the right mix for your organization.

Organizational and Practice Management – Effective strategies for managing the delivery of global legal services are essential.  These strategies include:

• Effective organizational structures
• Effective leadership and management
• Ensuring efficiency and effectiveness of performance
• Proper staffing
• Retaining and controlling outside counsel
• Allocating workloads
• Delegating to subordinates
• Developing professionalism

Strategic Planning – How should you position your department within the company? We help you anticipate your department's needs over the coming years, to enhance the delivery of legal service and the image of your department.

Compensation and Career Progression – Attracting, retaining and motivating top-notch lawyers and staff with innovative approaches to compensation is essential in today’s competitive environment. Not only can we help design performance management programs, but we bring 25 years of experience in designing compensation plans with recommendations supported by quantitative data from our annual law department and law firm compensation surveys.

How You Benefit

You draw on our deep experience with law departments, benchmark the performance and practices of other solid departments with quantative data and ultimately increase your value to the company.