Would you listen to the General Counsel of Sun Microsystems, if he said:
“I do believe that there may be times when a $1,000/hour fee is warranted”
“…just yesterday, I read of another example of how law firms continue to be primarily focused on maintaining profits through consolidation and growth of headcount. As a GC, what I’d rather see is an article about how law firms are creating new business models that reflect the reality of my organization – providing consistently high quality of service with a constant focus on efficiency.”
“As recently as four years ago, we had several hundred (that’s always embarrassing for me to say) law firms that we used for general purpose legal work in the United States. Since then, we have been aggressively reducing this number to the point that this year we announced that we are moving to nine "Preferred Partner" firms.”
“…we are already seeing examples where … firms are proposing creative pricing models and investing in better understanding our business.”
“…we needed to have about 10,000 agreements reviewed and summarized for an on-line database. We send out an RFP to a large number of firms and through this process filtered the number of candidates down to a handful. These were then invited to participate in an on-line competition for the work. During the course of the event, it was fascinating to see firms from around the world compete to win the business. (If you’ve ever sold anything on eBay, you know the feeling.)”
“…we quietly started a small team several years ago called "GLN" (Global Legal Services). They are focused on efficiently handling the less complex, but higher volume agreements and services we provide.”
The above quotes are from a single blog post called: Context is everything by Mike Dillon
Senior Vice President, General Counsel and Corporate Secretary, Sun Legal Department of
Sun Microsystems, Inc.: .
PUNCHLINE: Managing Partners – do you dare not read his future blog posts?