Corporations have long used professional procurement teams to source everything from I-beams to iPads. There was, however, an exception: legal. Why? Because legal is different – meaning it’s “not widgets.” If Buying Legal Council, a trade group for procurement professionals, has its druthers, that will change. Old habits will die, and “intelligent purchasing” by law departments will thrive. “Buying legal services is known to be a challenging task,” says the Buying Legal Market Intelligence Report. “In the past, it was firmly in the hands of the legal department and the legal department alone. Given the enormous sums companies spend on legal services, a passive approach borders on negligence.” The report, which features an array of charts, aims to show that corporate law departments are finally accepting procurement’s involvement in sourcing outside legal services. The benefit to the more-with-less world of Gas are hard to ignore. According to the report, procurement professionals are delivering an average 17.1 percent savings on legal services. That translates into $34.2 million for a company spending $200 million on outside legal services. There’s much more. Download an executive summary of the 67-page report at www.buyinglegal.com.
Published July 5, 2019.
