How To Overcome Resistance To Legal Spend Management

When you are in a legal matter, it is important to have a good relationship with your law firm. This is especially true if you are implementing new guidelines or processes for managing legal spend. However, what if your billing attorney does not want to participate in these new initiatives? Here are some tips on what to do if your billing attorney does not want to participate in implementing your outside counsel guidelines or your new bill review/spend management process.

Why Your Billing Attorney Might Not Want to Participate

These reasons might include:

• They are not comfortable with the changes.

• They think the changes are unnecessary.

• They are worried about the impact the changes will have on their billable hour quota.

What to Do If Your Billing Attorney Does Not Want to Participate?

If your billing attorney does not want to participate in implementing your new guidelines or processes, you need to talk to them about it. The first step is to understand why they are not interested in participating. Once you understand their reasons, you can start to address their concerns.

Here are some tips on how to talk to your billing attorney about this issue:

• Be respectful. Remember that they are working hard on your behalf. Be respectful when you are talking to them about this issue.

• Listen to their concerns. Take the time to listen to their concerns. This will help you to understand their perspective and to address their concerns in a way that is fair to both parties.

• Explain that your organization has processes in place to check the accuracy of vendor bills before you pay them, such as phone bills, insurance bills, etc. Explain to your law firms that formalizing this process of legal bill review is simply applying the same standard that your organization applies to every other bill. Why would legal bills be exempt from the proper fiduciary practice of checking for mistakes prior to payment?

Implementing new guidelines or processes for managing legal spend should be a smooth transition. It is important to do this if you want to ensure that you are getting the most value for your legal spend. If individual law firms do not want to participate in these new initiatives, you need to talk to them about it. By following these tips, you can increase your chances of success.