Transparency is a two-way street for law firms and corporate counsel

Corporate counsel often describes transparency as a desirable characteristic among their law firms. This usually refers to transparency as to the status of a matter, the work being performed and clarity in billing and invoicing. 

All of those things are important, but true transparency is a two-way street. As Dan Kayne, a longtime GC at Network Rail turned consultant and founder of the O Shaped Lawyer, suggested in a new ebook, all stakeholders need to be open to genuine, and sometimes difficult conversations: 

“This means both parties putting all their cards on the table early and highlighting the common ground – the fact that both the corporate legal team and outside counsel are ultimately one team supporting the same end customer.”

The end customer, of course, is the business. 

We’d be remiss too if we didn’t mention that the selection of legal technologies can make a difference too. As our CEO Nicholas d’Adhemar wrote recently for Legaltech News, some tools like e-billing, are being used to “squeeze their firms for discounts.”

“What’s happened is that data is effectively being weaponized for negotiation. In-house legal teams are battling asymmetry with asymmetry, which in turn, has created a zero-sum environment. The result is a unique oddity of the legal industry where a client hires a law firm for help, but in some ways, they treat each other as adversaries.” 

By contrast, legal spend management provides law firms with the same visibility as corporate counsel. It literally puts law firms on the same page with the in-house team. That’s the ultimate objective of transparency in the business of law. 

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Dan Kayne and Apperio's CEO Nicholas d’Adhemar teamed up to elaborate on this topic and more in a new e-book, which can be freely downloaded without registration here: Getting ahead of the invoice: 7 tips for controlling legal spend. 

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