Service Delivery Reviews

Once the company has selected the best firms to work with, the focus should be on service delivery and continuous improvement to the value stream, especially as it concerns operational excellence. To that end, the Procertas consulting group has developed a more structured approach, which relies on a customized questionnaire with quantifiable measurements across 10 categories ...
Service Delivery Reviews
Richard Stock, Catalyst Consulting
Once the company has selected the best firms to work with, the focus should be on service delivery and continuous improvement to the value stream, especially as it concerns operational excellence. To that end, the Procertas consulting group has developed a more structured approach, which relies on a customized questionnaire with quantifiable measurements across 10 categories that affect the delivery of legal services in some way. Procertas completes the technical review with a formal interview of each law firm. The entire process is labelled a “service delivery review” (SDR).

It is worthwhile describing some of the 10 categories that constitute service delivery in Procertas’ universe. The first, basic user hardware/software, evaluates the law firms against a baseline of technology investment. In-house counsel can also assess their own technology resources and the extent to which configurations are productivity-enhancing. The second category, document management/mobility, determines the extent to which lawyers and other timekeepers can work effectively away from the office. The focus is on hardware, software and data connections.

The third category in the SDR is staffing ratios/delegation. This category takes on much more importance as clients ask firms to compete for work, to reduce their prices and to introduce more predictability in legal fees. Understandably, the ratios vary by specialization and complexity of legal work. Technology training is the fourth category. The SDR evaluates the level of investment made in training lawyers to attain and sustain proficiency in the full range of available technologies that make them mobile and productive.

The call for electronic signatures is less in evidence in Canada than it is in the US, mostly due to legal constraints. This prevents the migration to paperless professional practice that integrates directly into standard workflows without printing, signing and scanning everything. In turn, the client pays for an elevated cost of doing business — both financially and in time lost. The sixth category is document assembly/automation, relying on clean templates that are improved over time and again integrated into standard workflows.

Few firms, and fewer lawyers, have the appetite for formal management processes and legal project management to improve productivity and to reduce costs. The reluctance is as much due to a personal aversion as it is to the hourly-based fee systems that distort incentives for doing more with less and for less.

Procertas’ eighth category is knowledge management. Both law firms and law departments should have access to and use prior work product. The SDR evaluates the extent to which the information is updateable. It also looks at the incentives for lawyers to consult the repository as a matter of course rather than reinventing the wheel and charging the client every time.

Data and the related analytics are a category that evaluates the extent to which data is converted into actionable information as one way to bring more certainty to costs and outcomes. Procertas calls the 10th category of its SDR billing hygiene. It evaluates the speed with which time is recorded in the firm. The assumption is that time worked is naturally overestimated the longer the lawyer delays in recording it. Some firms give their clients real-time access to their timekeeping records.

The 10 categories are more than a checklist of “nice-to-haves” because they can drive resource allocation, priorities for improvement and behaviours for both the client and its law firms. While it is possible to assign an equal weighting to each category, it makes more sense to treat them differently over time. For example, staffing ratios, legal project management and prompt billing might be emphasized in the first year, more than the other categories.

It is then practical to assemble a scorecard that compares the SDR results of one firm to the other firms used by the client. Firms are scored on a scale of 1 to 5 for each category. An overall score that factors in the weighting of categories should be shared with all participating firms, perhaps referring to the firms by number rather than by name.

While it is true that you tend to focus on what you measure, it is also true that you get what you pay for. And for that reason, it makes sense for the fee arrangements with all law firms to include a significant component for performance. Part of that performance should be tied to improving service delivery.

Terms of engagement with external counsel should include SDRs as a matter of course and as a fee component. This assumes ongoing dialogue between the client and the firm. General counsel and progressive law firms would do well to conduct regular SDRs that are as structured and detailed as those offered by Procertas.  Everybody wins.


Richard Stock, M.A., FCIS, CMC, is a partner with Catalyst Consulting. Richard can be contacted at (416) 367-4447 or at [email protected].