SimpleLegal Blog

In-House Counsel

• In-House Counsel

  Best Law Books: The Ultimate Reading List for Legal Professionals

  Looking for the best law books to fill out your legal library? Whether you’re a legal ops professional, prospective law student, or anyone working in the legal industry, you’re sure to find s...

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• In-House Counsel

  Outside Counsel Guidelines: 7 Things You Might Have Missed

  Outside counsel guidelines (OCG) vary widely by company and sometimes span hundreds of pages, theoretically covering every possible situation that can arise between in-house and outside counsel. ...

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• Industry Trends

  The 20 Best Legal Podcasts to Listen to in 2020

  While there are thousands of legal podcasts spanning hundreds of niche topics, the best legal podcasts combine great research, expert input, and engaging storytelling. We’ve done our own resear...

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• Legal Operations

  Interview with Stephanie Corey of UpLevel Ops

  We’re sitting down with legal professionals to learn more about their roles and responsibilities, uncover useful insights and best practices, and discuss their view on the future of legal and l...

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• Legal Tech

  What is a LEDES File and Why Should Legal Teams Care?

  Have you ever heard the words “LEDES file” mentioned, and think to yourself – ‘what is that?’ Don’t worry, you’re not the only one! In this post, we’re sharing what a ...

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• In-House Counsel

  How to Make Sense of UTBMS Codes

  Uniform Task-Based Management System (UTBMS) codes make detailed spend reporting possible by ensuring that each task and expense is categorized. That way, when you notice in Q1 that spending is o...

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• Industry Trends

  30 Top Legal Blogs to Follow

  When you’re scouring the net for a sector-specific legal resource, or for trustworthy insights into the latest legal developments, the sheer array of law blogs on offer can seem overwhelming. T...

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• Enhancing the Relevance of General Counsel in Modern Business

  As the legal industry continues to evolve, so does the way the legal department adapts to technology. Today’s general counsel are expanding their scope of responsibilities, becoming more data-d...

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• Industry Trends

  End of the Year Legal Conferences for In-House Counsel (2019)

  With so many legal conferences taking place throughout the year, we know it can be hard to figure out which to prioritize and attend. To help navigate your options, we’ve highlighted some of th...

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• In-House Counsel

  Sourcing Legal Services: More Isn’t Always Merrier

  Many in-house legal departments don’t like change and feel comfortable maintaining the status quo, especially when it comes to their law firms. I mean, why fix something if it isn’t broken, r...

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• In-House Counsel

  The Era of Digital Transformation and Its Impact on Legal

  Automation, digitization, cloud capabilities, artificial intelligence – these themes are all top of mind, tip of tongue, across C-suites. It all started with the device in your pocket, your sma...

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• In-House Counsel

  Feature Interview: Legal Operations within the Law Firm with Jerry Wyckoff

  We’re sitting down with legal professionals to learn more about their roles and responsibilities, uncover useful insights and best practices, and discuss their views on the future of legal and ...

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• In-House Counsel

  5 Key Metrics for Productive Vendor Conversations

  Data continues to play an increasingly important role for in-house legal teams, most notably allowing general counsel and chief legal officers (CLOs) to speak the language of data – to quantify...

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• Legal Operations

  The 2 Biggest Corporate Legal Investments of 2019

  General counsel who traditionally reigned over risk, ethics, and compliance are now being asked to think about budget, technology, and operational efficiency. A handful of studies demonstrate the...

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• In-House Counsel

  3 Quick Tips for Getting Started with Legal KM

  A successful legal knowledge management (KM) program increases legal department productivity, eliminates time spent doing duplicate work, and delivers consistency by leveraging intellectual and k...

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• In-House Counsel

  5 Things I Learned at the Digital Transformation in Corporate Legal Roundtable

  Last week, we partnered with Morae Global to host a panel discussion on the digital transformation currently taking shape within corporate legal departments across the world. Starting bright and ...

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• In-House Counsel

  4 Tips to Move from GC to COO

  We recently had the pleasure of speaking to Dan Wright, who shared his path of being the first in-house legal hire at AppDynamics – serving as their General Counsel – to taking on a more stra...

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• In-House Counsel

  5 Valuable Insights from Evolve the Law’s Legal Tech Roundtable

  I just had the pleasure of attending the Evolve the Law ‘Emerging Legal Departments: Legal Tech 101 Roundtable’ in Sunnyvale where Bay Area legal departments networked over breakfast and part...

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• In-House Counsel

  Webinar Recap: Best Practices for Selling the Investment in Legal Technology Internally

  We just wrapped up our ‘Best Practices for Selling the Investment in Legal Technology Internally’ webinar – what a great discussion! If you couldn’t make the webinar, we wanted to summari...

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• In-House Counsel

  6 Upcoming Legal Events You Don’t Want to Miss

  What better way to expand your knowledge around legal operations than from your peers who have been there and done that? We’re sharing five upcoming events – both online and in-person – tha...

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• In-House Counsel

  4 Things You Can Do to Get the Most from Outside Counsel

  Maximizing outside counsel performance is part trial and error and part effective management. Whether you are just starting with law firms or have dozens (if not hundreds) of vendors, here are fo...

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• In-House Counsel

  How to Talk to Your GC about Investing in Legal Operations Technology

  Some legal professionals may feel apprehensive when approaching their GC or Chief Legal Officer (CLO) with requests to fund new legal operations technology. But, with a solid case in hand and an ...

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• SimpleLegal Updates

  Key Insights General Counsel and Legal Operations Have With SimpleLegal — And You Need

  Data is only as good as the insights you get out of it. Thanks to the widespread availability of software, extracting value from the massive amounts of data received by the legal department (spec...

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• In-House Counsel

  The Intelligent Way to Manage, Automate, and Control Your Invoice Process

  Developing billing guidelines is an important step towards ensuring your department is fiscally responsible and that unique business processes are being followed both internally and externally. Y...

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• In-House Counsel

  Matter Management vs. Case Management

  Matter Management (also referred to as Legal Matter Management) is the process in which matters and related data such as type of legal work, attorneys on the case, budgets, and invoices are gathe...

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• In-House Counsel

  Law Firm Diversity Programs: How to Track the Diversity of Your Outside Counsel

  Corporate legal departments are placing significant weight on their law firms’ commitment to provide a diverse staff to perform legal services across all practice areas. In fact, more than a th...

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• In-House Counsel

  3 Reasons Your Legal Department Needs Matter Templates

  As many legal teams know, creating legal matters can be a time-consuming process and a source of constant frustration. If you don’t have legal tech in place to facilitate matter creation, you�...

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• Legal Operations

  3 Benefits of Enforcing Your Billing Guidelines with Legal Tech

  The billing process naturally introduces tension between in-house legal teams and law firms. Surprise fees that lack justification, unauthorized charges, invoices submitted weeks or months after ...

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• Legal Operations

  Feature Interview: Global Legal Department Operations with Pierre Landy

  We’re sitting down with legal professionals to learn more about their roles and responsibilities, uncover useful insights and best practices, and discuss their view on the future and evolution ...

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• In-House Counsel

  Feature Interview: Extracting the Most Value from Legal Tech with Nicole Mason

  We’re sitting down with legal professionals to learn more about their roles and responsibilities, uncover useful insights and best practices, and discuss their view on the future of legal and l...

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• In-House Counsel

  Empowered General Counsel Position Their Departments as High Performing Business Units

  General counsel have always acted as the protectors of their organizations, providing legal advice to ensure that their company is acting in accordance with the law. However, today’s volatile a...

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• In-House Counsel

  The Basics of Billing Guidelines

  This post was updated on May 17, 2018 Corporate legal departments are shifting their thinking. No longer are law firms “just vendors”, but strategic partners who provide their expertise to he...

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• Legal Operations

  4 Quick Tips to Improve Your Legal Billing Guidelines

  Legal billing guidelines, also known as outside counsel billing guidelines, are a great way for legal departments to communicate their expectations of their law firms and vendors. However, withou...

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• In-House Counsel

  Measuring AFA Effectiveness Part II: Leveraging Historical Data

  A couple weeks ago, we published the first post in this series which focused on the intangible benefits of alternative fee arrangements (AFAs). Today’s post will highlight the process for deter...

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• In-House Counsel

  Measuring AFA Effectiveness Part I: How to Account for the “Intangibles”

  It’s been roughly ten years since best-selling author, Scott Turow, penned the cover story for the American Bar Association journal titled, ‘The Billable Hour Must Die.’ During this time Tu...

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• In-House Counsel

  3 Tips for Getting Your Law Firms to Participate in Accrual Estimates

  Legal accruals and how to manage them is a common topic brought up in conversations with our customers. On our blog, we’ve shared a brief introduction to accruals management and have discussed ...

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• In-House Counsel

  Standardize the Invoice Process & Reduce the Claims Lifecycle
  [Case Study]

  Litigation costs are some of the most challenging spend categories for an insurer to manage. Both the legal and claims departments must work together to strike the right balance of cost containme...

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• Legal Operations

  A Brief Introduction to Legal Accruals Management

  Many in-house legal teams are familiar with accruals, also known as unbilled estimates or the amounts that law firms estimate for work in progress. Unfortunately, unbilled estimates are difficult...

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• In-House Counsel

  4 Tools Your In-House Legal Team Needs

  *This article originally appeared on The Recorder Adopting technology is becoming more commonplace in legal. But, with a growing number of tools promising increased operational efficiency and red...

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• In-House Counsel

  Take the Guesswork Out of Measuring and Managing Your Legal Spend [Case Study]

  Leveraging a variety of outside counsel is common for legal teams of all sizes. Also common is the difficulty for some teams in managing the contacts and firms, the projects each firm is working ...

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• Legal Tech

  Alternative Fee Arrangements Allow for More Control Over Legal Spend

  In a Altman Weil survey of large and midsize law firms, 95% said they use Alternative Fee Arrangements (AFAs). Two-thirds of these firms report their use of AFAs is primarily reactive in response...

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• In-House Counsel

  Is Data Putting a Strain on Relationships with Outside Counsel?

  Since the publication of the GC Open Letter, announcing a real-time exercise to test industry assumptions to better understand how to improve the legal market, there’s been a lot of chatter aro...

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• SimpleLegal Updates

  SimpleLegal Team Members Share Their Favorite Product Features

  At SimpleLegal, we understand (and love!) that our users are in the system on a daily basis. Because of that, it’s always been our goal to provide GCs, legal operations professionals, and in-h...

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• Legal Operations

  Accruals Management Part II: Best Practices for Improving Your Accruals Process

  In part I of our accruals management series, we summarized why accruals are important, and how legal operations departments tend to be more equipped to own the accruals process than finance depar...

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• Legal Operations

  Accruals Management Part I: Why Are Accruals So Important?

  Last month, hundreds of legal operations professionals gathered at the Bellagio in Las Vegas, taking part in the 2nd annual CLOC Institute, the largest legal operations event in history. The orga...

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• Legal Tech

  Breaking Down the Legal Invoice Handoff to Accounts Payable

  An invoice from outside counsel is received. It’s reviewed by the in-house legal team. It’s approved (or sometimes rejected, sent back to the outside vendor for modifications, and the...

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• Legal Tech

  Make Your Legal Department More Efficient Today

  Businesses today are emphasizing the importance of understanding corporate expenditures and ROI. This, of course, includes outside counsel spend. In-house legal departments are no longer exempt f...

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• In-House Counsel

  6 Ways To Build Better Relationships with Outside Counsel

  Part of the challenge as a general counsel is getting the best work out of your outside counsel for the best value. Even with good intentions, it doesn’t always pan out this way. Your prioritie...

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• In-House Counsel

  Become a Data-Driven General Counsel

  As a general counsel, you rely on your outside counsel and in-house expertise to direct your company in the right direction. You’ll read through dozens of case studies, a mountain of text, and ...

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• In-House Counsel

  Feature Interview: How GCs are Transforming the Legal Department with Katie Biber

  As corporate law stretches and changes under the weight of new business structures, so too has the role of general counsel. Tasked with overseeing the legal footprint of their companies, general ...

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• Legal Operations

  Feature Interview: Insights into Legal Operations with Google’s Mary O’Carroll

  Corporate law departments are spending more on in-house resources than on law firms or external legal service providers, with the percentage of general counsel stating their companies need dedica...

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• In-House Counsel

  Feature Interview: Moving In-House Counsel Melissa Tidwell

  As corporate law stretches and changes under the weight of new business structures, so too has the role of the general counsel. Tasked with overseeing the legal footprint of their companies, gene...

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• In-House Counsel

  Deciding It’s Time for e-Billing

  Raising the Bar We understand why general counsel at some companies put off buying a legal e-Billing system as long as they possibly can. Software from legacy vendors can be clunky and hard to s...

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• Legal Tech

  GCs, Legal Ops & CFOs Have More Productive Conversations with Data

  Why Are We Spending So Much in Legal? One SimpleLegal customer (a public tech company with legal department that grew from a team of 1 to a team of 14) was told by his finance department that he ...

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• Legal Tech

  One Question to Add to Your RFP: Are You the Future?

  I’m lucky. I get to live in the future. I see self-driving cars every single day. We all live in the future in our personal lives. We can click a button to summon a car for a lift t...

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• In-House Counsel

  What does a 200-Page Legal Bill Look Like?

  At SimpleLegal, we believe data can change the world. We also believe, it doesn’t have to be complicated. Simple isn’t easy, but it’s worth it. That’s why I get excited w...

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• In-House Counsel

  The First Step to Controlling Legal Spend

  We’re committed to bringing transparency to CFOs for every expense entry on their P&Ls. We started with legal expense because it has the biggest opportunity for improvement. Customers w...

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• In-House Counsel

  Big Law, Big Bill. For Now.

  Controlling the Chaos SimpleLegal is the easiest way for a company to understand and reduce their legal spend. Instead of piles of paper or emailed PDFs, we offer one place to receive, review, an...

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