Page 17 - CCCA 247020 Magazine Spring 2016

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Building Better

RosteRs

7 Things In-House Counsel

Need to Know about the
RFP Process

By Jim Middlemiss

What they found was that TELUS had an unwieldy 59 law frms There is also a Request for Information (RFI), often used
on retainer, conducting a wide variety of work. “Some we used by organizations to gather comparative data to help determine
more frequently than others,” notes Belec. This meant different next steps. An RFI often precedes the formal issuance of an RFP.
retainer agreements and work processes were in place for each For example, if you don’t know which law frms have specifc
of the law frms TELUS dealt with. expertise in a certain area, an RFI can narrow the feld.
The duo saw it as an opportunity to use a Request for Finally, there is a Request for Quotes (RFQ). An RFQ is usu-
Proposal (RFP) process to refresh TELUS’s external coun- ally used to solicit bids on a specifc good or service, for ex-
sel program in order to not only get a better handle on legal ample, a piece of litigation or a specifc transaction. RFQs work
spending, but—equally important—fnd ways to standardize best with commoditized services.
the way it worked with law frms, identify administrative ef- RFPs, as in the case of TELUS, are not new. Government,
fciencies, and bring additional value-added services to the regulatory organizations and Crown corporations have been
company for its legal spend. using tendering for years to acquire legal services. For example,
Today, TELUS works with a more streamlined 21 law frms, in January, Ontario’s Independent Electricity System Opera-
not all of which were on its original roster. The company has a tor (IESO), a Crown corporation responsible for operating the
standardized retainer agreement in place and has built deeper province’s electricity market, closed an RFP to establish vendors
relations with its top tier law frms, which are now more aligned of record for a wide range of legal services. That followed an
with its business. The company hopes to lower its legal spend by earlier RFP seeking legal services for the design and delivery of
as much as 15% annually. an industrial accelerator program.
A growing number of legal departments are turning to ten- When it comes to the private sector, RFPs were slow to
der and procurement processes when it comes to take off but seem to be gaining more traction. They
doling out work to external law frms. started with banks and insurers, and are slowly
However, procurement comes in a variety of Our objective spreading down the industry food chain. That
was to make
shapes and sizes. For example, there is the RFP, used sure that we trend has been aided in part by globalization, the
by companies seeking solutions to problems. It sets were spending rise of national law frms, and the focus by com-
our dollars
out the scope of the engagement, specifes what the in the right panies on cutting costs and fnding effciencies in
company is looking to do and establishes criteria “ces. their operations.
pla
that bidders must meet. It’s a highly formalized pro- ” Take BMO Financial Group, for example. In No-
cess that generates detailed responses. A Request for vember 2013, it formally launched a program to
Tender (RFT) is similar in nature and allows suppli- refresh its external counsel program. However, the
ers to respond to a detailed bid. process actually started in 2012, says Bindu Cudjoe,

Alan Dabb

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