One of the biggest stories over the summer of 2017 was an open letter from 25 general counsel announcing that they are working together to test industry assumptions about the legal market. Although the composition of this group is very impressive, it is also not random. Each company is a member of AdvanceLaw, a network of buyers and suppliers of legal work that seek to drive value by sharing quality metrics and creating data-driven best practices.

Fortunately, Legal Evolution readers are about to get the benefit of some of AdvanceLaw’s insights. Over the next three days, AdvanceLaw Managing Director Dan Currell will post a three-part series on law firm convergence and preferred provider networks — basically, theory versus practice (029), how to build a panel that can deliver value (030), and the necessity of active client management (031).

Over the last 10 to 15 years, many large corporate clients have attempted to use convergence to rein in their legal costs, typically through a process that reduces the number of outside law firms, often from two or three hundred to twenty or fewer”preferred provider” law firms. Convergence is controversial because, among other things, it disrupts longstanding (and often comfortable) relationships between in-house lawyers and established law firms. Also, because the process is run by risk-averse corporate counsel who are winnowing firms for the first time, the results tend to favor the “safe” choice.

Notwithstanding these problems, we are going to see more — and better run — convergence in the future, as clients have a strong incentive to fix the underlying design and execution issues. The state-of-the-art is definitely going to improve.

Dan Currell is uniquely qualified to write on this topic.  Prior to joining AdvanceLaw, Currell spent more than a decade running the General Counsel Roundtable for the Corporate Executive Board (CEB). Between his time at CEB and AdvanceLaw, Dan has spent more time listening to challenges of senior in-house lawyers than virtually anyone in the legal industry.  Further, Dan and his colleagues at AdvanceLaw are now in a position to help shape the future.

I hope you enjoy these posts. WDH.

What’s next?  See Part I on Convergence: Why Theory Falls Short of Practice (029)