Alan Guy on Lowering Costs for General Counsels in Legal Dive
January 13, 2023
Publication: Legal Dive
For general counsels (GCs) in many organizations, a slowing economy in 2023 is putting pressure on them to spend less, particularly on their highest cost: outside counsel spending. Kobre & Kim’s Alan Guy, the Managing Director of Underwriting and Value Optimization, sat down with Legal Dive to emphasize how professionalizing fee discussions can allow clients and counsel to find win-win deals that align pricing and value.
One of the concerns GCs and legal leaders have is that, if they get the pricing wrong and end up paying more than they otherwise would have, it will reflect poorly on their judgment, said Mr. Guy: “They . . . revert back to what they’re familiar with.”
Legal ops can help by connecting in-house departments to a specialist who can tailor pricing in a way both the in-house and outside counsel sides can accept. “What’s increasingly happening is that those [fee-setting] discussions are happening directly between pricing professionals as opposed to between the general counsel and the partner,” Mr. Guy explained.