Financial & Vendor Management
Legal Departments are no longer given a blank check to resource the company’s legal needs. In-house departments are held to the same standards as other functions and must be fiscally responsible by managing to a budget. This is challenging because many departments operate with little visibility and predictability related to their spend.
Developing financial and vendor management programs for your Legal Department creates the opportunity to gather data, gain insights, and maximize resources within the department to align with the company’s strategic priorities, all while gaining credibility with the CFO.
How UpLevel Ops Can Help
Working closely with you and your team, UpLevel Ops will analyze the department’s financial data, processes, and technology to build programs that:
- Deliver more predictability and consistency to your financial planning, budgeting, and forecasting cycles
- Proactively spot trends in spending and legal activity to inform future action and identify missed opportunities
- Identify new opportunities for savings and efficiency, both internally and externally
- Improve communications, expectations, and relationships among all internal and external stakeholders (i.e., corporate finance, law firms, and vendors)
- Gain efficiency and visibility using eBilling, Legal RFP, and Data Analytics tools and services, as appropriate and available
There are many ways to tackle the challenges of Financial & Vendor Management, and how each Legal Department builds these programs is unique, but they typically include:
- Outside counsel and vendor onboarding
- Outside counsel and vendor evaluation programs and scorecards
- Standard master retention agreements and outside counsel billing guidelines
- Outside counsel and vendor DE&I programs
- Robust reporting
Among other things, UpLevel Ops can help you:
- Determine the need for technology such as eBilling, and tool selection, implementation, and maintenance, if deemed appropriate
- Optimize your current system if a tool is already in place
- Identify KPIs and create a reporting, metrics, and data analytics program
- Develop dashboards to visualize key data easily
- Understand what work is sent to outside counsel, what work can be pulled in-house, and when can alternative legal service providers be leveraged (AKA Build vs. Buy vs. Rent Strategies)
- Develop preferred law firm panels, including rate and pricing models
- Implement value-based pricing programs and other alternative fee arrangements (AFA) opportunities
- Create and run RFPs
- Build outside counsel scorecards and quarterly business reviews (QBRs)
Get Started
UpLevel Ops experts are ready to help you show results with improved Financial & Vendor Management. To get the conversation started with UpLevel Ops, please fill out this form, or email us at info@uplevelops.com
We look forward to hearing from you soon.
“The ULO team has practical expertise at every layer of legal operations and continues to be a leading voice in the community.”
“Emerging technologies can significantly shorten the path to progress in corporate legal operations, but only if people and processes are thoughtfully aligned behind the scenes. We always feel confident connecting our customers with UpLevel Ops and know that the partnership will leave them primed for sustainable long-term success. From defining multi-year roadmaps to designing everyday workflows, the ULO team has practical expertise at every layer of legal operations and continues to be a leading voice in the community.”
– Alex Kelly, COO & co-founder, Brightflag
