areas of legal work. iDiscussions with key stakeholders, who often come from executive departments throughout the corporation, are critical so the ALSP can understand the areas of concern and provide effective, tailored solutions that address the root of the issues. We build trusted advisory relationships with the C-suite about what keeps them up at night, what problems they are trying to solve, and their key initiatives for growth. We look at their potential exposure to risk including litigation, compliance programs, legal privacy issues, their IT security concerns, contract management and ways to increase profitability by streamlining work. Our goals are to build long-term relationships and aim to be trusted partners to enhance their business and legal objectives. The consultative approach allows us to create unique, tailored plans for each of our clients. How do legal consulting firms partner directly with lawyers and in-house counsel to optimise their practice? One simple yet important word: teamwork! Here at Protiviti, we provide deep expertise in business, technology and legal advisory services to ensure there is nothing we are not considering in assisting our clients. Within the legal space, that could include focusing on litigation, forensics, legal compliance matters, project management, contract outsourcing and optimising legal work. In our other areas, we could bring experts to bear in business performance improvement, ESG, data security, audit, fraud and investigations and digital transformation. We also provide a level of transparency that is not historically typical in the legal profession, including giving clients access to multiple technology platforms that allows them to review the work our people are doing in real time, at any time. These platforms also include daily and weekly productivity dashboards and key metrics about our performance and the overall objective. WWW.LAWYER-MONTHLY.COM | APR 2022 MY LEGAL LIFE - CHAD VOLKERT We see our services as complementary to those offered by law firms and in-house counsel and actively partner with them to ensure that together we offer the client an efficient, cost-effective approach that maximizes our individual areas of expertise. In many cases, law firms reach out to us before proposing solutions to potential clients, offering our services in concert with their legal expertise as a key differentiator that assists them in winning work. At Protiviti, as part of a wider business consulting firm and with our parent company Robert Half’s talent solutions, we can also recommend and bring additional experts to a client at a moment’s notice at a different cost base compared to traditional firms. During a recent client engagement, we were initially engaged to optimise their legal department contracts system, but on learning that the company was planning to go public, we were able to provide robust consulting expertise in relevant legal, financial and technology areas around taking a company public and quickly identified a full-time lawyer whom they then brought in-house to assist the general counsel in the IPO. Which areas of legal practice are often the most ripe for improvement? How corporations handle their contracts. Many companies are still in the process of transferring from paper to digital records or merging software systems (especially if they are acquiring another entity). We can help smooth and expedite this process. 22 We can also assist more generally in helping companies understand what’s in their contracts and offer advice on remediating them, if necessary. Privacy. This is an area where many companies today need specialised assistance form a legal, IT and compliance standpoint. We provide both data privacy and legal privacy strategies including the legal drafting of privacy processes and work with our clients to locate and secure their data and understand what their vendors may be doing with their data. Investigations. We can go through all of our clients’ documentation to quickly identify risk and fraud issues. Mergers & Acquisitions. We typically work with general counsel and the C-suite on due diligence for M&A matters as well as contract remediation as new systems merge with other CLM’s. Optimising New Technologies. With the proliferation of new technologies available, many companies are unsure of which ones to use or the capabilities of those they already have. We bring data and IT teams to help them optimise the latest technologies for efficiency and cost effectiveness. Why is a holistic approach necessary to the optimisation process? A company may be working with multiple vendors, contacts and price points – an inefficient and costly process for GCs. With a global consulting firm like
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