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CCCA62_034-38.qxd:CCCA_V1No1_DriversSeat-FIN.qxd 09/14/2007 03:19 PM Page 37 Feature you to try something different to keep your business.” reasons for convergence in the first place. The prevailing wisdom is that after you pare down your list of This focus on stable pricing has created more friction regarding law firms,you renegotiate your relationship with those that are left. that cherished law firm institution, the billable hour. At the heart You start this process,Wilber says, by agreeing upon the assump- of convergence is clients’ desire to lower and control costs. Not tions that govern the relationship. Then, you agree that if work surprisingly, this runs head on into the desire of most law firms to comes in that is wildly outside that range of assumptions, you are increase revenue by billing more and more hours every year.This going to talk about it, negotiate it and fix it. “It needs to be win- situation has been aggravated by many law firms’decisions to give win for it to work,” saysWilber. “Both sides need to be flexible.” unprecedented raises to first-year associates in an effort to entice new talent to their firms. Multi-year agreements Another key aspect of partnering is that, in many cases, it Fixed fees replaces the traditional supplier/purchaser arrangement and Along with convergence has come an emerging trend toward turns the relationship into a business-to-business arrangement. fixed fees in North America and in offshore jurisdictions. These tend to be multi-year agreements — in effect,a commit- “Law firms can still charge by the hour for big transactions and ment that if certain hours of work are available, those hours are litigation matters,” says Hodgart, commenting on the UK mar- going to go to that particular firm. In return for this relative secu- ket.“More often,clients are now saying: ‘We want an estimate;we rity, the client organization should be confident that its law firms want a fixed price.’” Hodgart hastens to add that the fixed price is are free of legal conflicts,and will always provide a team of lawyers always based on a set of assumptions, and if those assumptions that knows the client’s business and will be available to them on a change, the law firm should be free to submit a new price. kind of Gold Card, Prestige Status arrangement, says Stock. This new dynamic means that law firms have to learn new skills. Perhaps most importantly, client organizations should expect “In the UK, the bigger firms are training their partners in project stable, predictable pricing — the lack of which was one of the management,” he says. “They’re learning how to put a price on a À l’ère de la convergence CONSULTING Les relations entre les cabinets TO LAW et les contentieux ne sont plus ce qu'elles étaient. DEPARTMENTS orsque le contentieux de E.I.du Pont a entrepris,il y a plus de L10 ans,un processus de convergence visant à réduire le nombre de cabinets juridiques desservant la multinationale, l’objectif était Positioning & Strategy de contrôler les coûts reliés à la prestation de services juridiques. Parmi les 400 bureaux qui recevaient des mandats de la multi- Organization of the nationale, seuls 40 ont été retenus en bout de piste. C’est à ce Department moment que les relations entre avocats internes et externes ont commencé à subir une transformation profonde.De nos jours,près Workflow and Workload 80% des grandes entreprises en Europe et en Amérique du Nord ont adopté,sous une forme ou une autre,un plan de convergence. Performance Management « La convergence a été un grand succès »,estime Murray Aust, avocat-conseil senior à la Banque Royale du Canada. Il affirme Managing Total que malgré la croissance de l’activité bancaire et des revenus Legal Spend Telephone depuis presque deux ans, la Banque Royale a néanmoins réus- (416) 367-4447 si à réduire ses dépenses reliées aux frais juridiques. Retreats & Surveys (514) 914-3043 Selon Richard Stock,associé fondateur de Conseil Catalyst,il n’y a pas de mal « à distribuer le travail parmi le plus petit nombre pos- Website sible de prestataires de services ». Même son de cloche chez Donna Miller, directrice du AUTOMNE 2007 CCCA Canadian Corporate Counsel Association 37