The Association of Corporate Counsel (ACC) recently launched a digital guide for the corporate counsel community on managing legal costs and outside counsel relationships in Europe. The guide provides access to select resources on any web-enabled device, including tablets and smartphones, and sharing via social media.
The effort to control legal costs is now a global one. In particular, European general counsel have increasingly focused on introducing commonsense business practices. To that end, this new online resource, Guide to the ACC Value Challenge in Europe, provides general counsel with tools for operating their law departments and managing costs in a global business environment, and highlights methods for optimizing legal resources within and outside the organization.
The 75-plus-page guide is divided into two parts, which focus on creating a successful foundation and identifyingways to effectively manage costs and outside counsel relationships in Europe. The guide offers tools and resources on defining strategies to create higher value, communicating in a cross-border market, determining metrics, clarifying spending, enhancing available resources, and setting the stage for implementing effective alternative fee arrangements. Importantly, this guide also features anecdotes on managing relationships, driving value internally and measuring success from top-level general counsel and law firm partners from such organizations as BT Global Services UK, Eversheds, HJ Heinz and others.
“ACC created the guide to assist both in-house and outside counsel with improving legal service offerings and increasing efficiency, while working in the changing European marketplace,” explained Veta T. Richardson, ACC's president and chief executive officer. “By implementing value-based fee arrangements, in-house counsel are also able to better predict budgetary needs and improve results.”
As a component of the ACC Value Challenge, an initiative launched in 2008 to reconnect the value and the cost of legal services, the guide addresses pressures placed on corporate counsel to expand business to wider territories with limited resources and serves as a go-to resource for management. Links to additional relevant ACC Value Challenge guides are embedded throughout the guide. To access the Guide to the ACC Value Challenge in Europe, visit www.acc.com/valuechallenge/europe.