Lowering expenses with legal extranets

Corporate law departments who wish to lower their outside counsel expenses might consider implementing legal extranets.

These systems help lower costs in the following ways.

1) Document distribution. There is no need to overnight or fax documents that can be placed on a legal extranet.

2) Status Report Preparation. There is no need to pay attorneys and previously to generate case or litigation status reports if clients can look information up in an on-line case management system.

3) Reduced research costs. Prior to conducting research, law firms and clients can check against the set of previously completed interviews and research to be sure that the work they are contemplating doing is necessary and has not already been completed by others.

4) Providing a single location to post a trial calendar, thus reducing the need to have multiple entities track this and distribute it amongst all the stakeholders.

5) Providing a single location to post information on a case management or litigation status bulletin board for all parties to a litigation to read and review at their convenience.

Outside Counsel Management

Legal extranets can help corporate counsel track the approved counsel working on a litigation. And, they can also track the list of approved timekeepers (both attorneys and staff) working on the litigation.

They also can provide the capability to distribute messages, via a bulletin board, to all outside firms working on a case. Also, these messages are not only distributed, but also can be stored in a repository so they are available for historical review as a sort of outside counsel policy manual for law firms working on a case on behalf of a client.

This management capability helps to manage and control the costs associated with a litigation, as well as helps to be sure the proper staff (and a consistent set of staff) are representing the client in their legal matter as per agreements reached when the client retained the law firm to represent them.