Are Legal Bottlenecks Impacting Your Business?

by Karen Muller

The symptoms of overspending and misspending on legal services are common to many companies:

• Your legal department is a bottleneck, slowing down sales contracts for reasons that, at times, seem difficult to understand
• Your outside counsel bills, often from firms that previously employed your internal attorneys, keep skyrocketing like healthcare expenses
• Litigation languishes for years with settlements often advised against by attorneys involved in the matter
• There are many disputes with employees and former employees about their compensation, performance reviews and bonuses  --  and when an employee is terminated for cause, there is often a dispute on the cause for termination costing you time and money.

There is an sensible and cost effective solution to this problem.  Hire an Interim General Counsel (IGC) to act as the Legal Restructuring Officer.   Just as a Restructuring Officer is hired by creditors of bankrupt companies to streamline operations and help the company emerge from bankruptcy with positive cash flow, the Interim General Counsel ("IGC") will streamline legal operations and help the company reduce unnecessary expenses.  As an outsider, the IGC is beholden to no one in the legal department or at outside law firms who provide services.  This allows the IGC to recommend and implement the necessary changes which are often not palatable to entrenched staff and consultants.

The ideal IGC has worked in both private practice and as General Counsel inside a companies.  The IGC begins an assignment by studying the structure of the Legal Department and its work flow.  A careful review of the interaction with sales, operations and human resources is also conducted.  The IGC will identify where workflow can be improved but will also seek to identify any material risks that are being ignored and insignificant risks which are being given too much time and attention.  Litigation is carefully reviewed to determine if settlement should be more aggressively pursued.  Outside attorney bills are analyzed to determine if costs are too high for services rendered.  The IGC will create a list of recommendations and unlike most consultants the IGC can stay to implement them.  The IGC can effectuate the hiring and termination of permanent legal department employees.

An example of an area of focus would be HR Policies, including benefits, compensation, vacations, breaks, posting of legal notices and hiring and terminating employees.   Companies need to "get these right" in order to avoid costly disputes in many states.  Often outside law firms write HR Manuals and the books simply sit on the shelf gathering dust.  The IGC will see that the policies are being implemented on a day to day basis by HR staff.  The end result is reduced time and expense on HR matters but no reduction of risk. 

One of the benefits of Interim General Counsel, is to hire the IGC for specific period of time tied to accountability and results.  At the end of the trial period, an assessment is made against results.  This is guaranteed to be a results-oriented exchange with insightful recommendations.  You can then decide on the length of the temporary employment for this highly skilled counselor.

Karen Muller is a Principal and an Interim Executive with Cerius Interim Executive Solutions, the largest provider of Interim Executive management services. 

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The Human Capital Institute "Gaining a Business Edge through Interim Executive Management".

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