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Case Studies: Contract Staffing
National Association Maintains Consistent Document Review Practices at 19 Member Offices While Cutting Cost by 70%
Lumen Legal assembles local teams of attorneys and paralegals to review highly-sensitive documents.
SITUATION
In response to a government investigation, a national association needs fast turn-around time on a large document review project involving 19 member offices and highly-sensitive hard copy documents. Costs are also a big concern.
Standardized performance measures and operating standards are important. Lumen Legal is selected and hired by each office individually. Procedures are established by the national office, and Lumen is tasked with ensuring consistent methodology for issue identification and resolution at all offices.
SOLUTION
Lumen Legal assembles local review teams across the U.S., then synchronizes the review for consistent results within shifting deadlines.
Lumen’s national project manager oversees local legal professional review teams including attorneys, law school graduates and paralegals contracted by Lumen. Back-up reviewers are also identified, and are used as needed. Best practices identified at each of the review sites are documented and consistently distributed to all of the review teams.
Lumen tracks, measures, and analyzes individual performance throughout the project and reports consolidated performance at all sites. Quality control meetings are held daily with team leads, the national project manager, and clients from the various locations.
RESULT
Lumen Legal teams, averaging 40 hours per week, complete the project in just over 45 days, meeting every aspect of the quality control and process documentation standards needed for this sensitive review.
Due to a significantly lower billing rate, the client offices reduce costs by 70% using contract attorneys, law graduates and paralegals.
Law Firm Client Reduces Cost of Electronic
Document Review By 72%
Experienced contract attorneys in three states, combined with deft project management, keep this project focused on best practices and high productivity. The result is lower costs.
SITUATION
The client of a large national law firm needs a large volume of electronic documents reviewed, and the firm contacts Lumen Legal. Office space constraints at the firm make the project a natural fit for the use of home-based attorneys to conduct the review. Significant previous document review experience is
necessary to help shape and guide the review process. High speed Internet connectivity is a must for all team members due to the software chosen for the project.
SOLUTION
Lumen Legal defines the scope of work and develops the project plan, including project tasks, assessment of the volume of documents to be reviewed and the skill set and experience level required, and identification of Team Leads. Lumen then determines the optimum geographic locations for the contract attorneys for project management purposes, fully developing
the recipe for cost containment.
PROJECT MANAGEMENT
The Senior Team Lead and two supporting Team Leads report to a National Project Manager, who ensures:
• Consistent and accurate communication of information
among all team members throughout the country
• File assignment and tracking for each reviewer
• Issue identification and resolution practices
• Consistent review standards
• Coordinated launch and completion
• A post-completion review to document best practices for
future document reviews
A key project management task: setting up and coordinating numerous orientation sessions between the software provider, the Lumen reviewers, and the law firm. Lumen executes standardized performance measures and operating standards, and rolls out an effective quality assurance process. Individual performance, as well as team performance, is tracked, measured, and analyzed. Quality Control meetings and project status meetings are held daily with the Team Leads and client, with an evolving list of best practices continuously circulated to all team members to ensure consistency and efficiency.
RESULT
The initial review is successfully completed on time, and the client is very satisfied. The project is initially expected to last two weeks, but the law firm and client request additional documents and a second phase extending the project to 90 days. In addition to meeting their deadline, the law firm’s client realizes a 72% cost savings using contract legal professionals.
Contract Attorneys and Paralegals in Local Regions Reduce Litigation Support Costs by Up To 62%
The legal department of a global manufacturer has significantly reduced the legal costs of tasks related to asbestos litigation, by using localized teams of contract attorneys and paralegals. In one region, costs have gone down 62%.
SITUATION
The corporation’s AGC approaches Lumen Legal, through a partner from their coordinating national law firm, with an idea that would potentially alleviate the rising costs of litigation by addressing the commodity-level tasks being performed by local counsel in various jurisdictions, nationwide.
SOLUTION
Lumen Legal is asked to work with local counsel to identify and deliver contract paralegals and attorneys that have a well-defined skill set and experience level. These legal professionals are then utilized to perform routine tasks.
The commodity-level tasks these legal professionals
perform include:
• Trial preparation
• Deposition scheduling and coding
• Deposition summaries
• Responses to complaints
• Settlement summary drafts
• Reports (trial/pre-trial, budget)
In addition, Lumen creates a “pool” of three to five attorneys that handle depositions on an as-needed basis in seven unique jurisdictions.
PROJECT MANAGEMENT
A team of legal professionals work in multiple locations throughout the U.S. The work being performed by the contractors is managed and reviewed by local counsel. Regular communication with legal professionals and local counsel working at the locations confirms continuity and quality assurance, and is reported at monthly intervals.
RESULT
Lumen Legal receives favorable feedback from the manufacturer’s Office of General Counsel. They decide to expand the initial program as they believe that they can realize a sizeable cost-savings. At one local counsel office, by utilizing a contract paralegal, the annual cost for the corporate client is reduced by 62%.
Team of Contract Attorneys Review Manufacturer’s Sub-Contractor Agreements with Faster Turn-Around
Flexible Workforce Assembled by Lumen Legal Using a Customized Skill-Match Testing Tool
SITUATION
The legal department of one the world’s largest manufacturers of brand-name home and building products is faced with rising legal costs related to the function of reviewing sub-contracts.
The corporation’s Senior Counsel asks Lumen Legal to develop a cost-effective process to review builder sub-contractor agreements, a function that had historically been performed by both client managers in the field and staff legal professionals working out of one of the client’s locations.
SOLUTION
Lumen works closely with the corporation to establish a systematized review process of builder sub-contractor agreements. From a quality perspective, it is critical that the process deliver the level of production the client requires, with zero defects or errors. Lumen begins by mapping the agreement review process, performing a cause-and-effects analysis related to the variations and analyzing data for sources of variation (Six Sigma). The resulting process
includes monitoring, tracking, and overall performance management of the Lumen Legal team in addition to review of the agreements.
A team of attorneys is then carefully screened and selected by Lumen Legal based on contract review experience. Lumen develops and utilizes a skill-match testing tool that simulates how candidates will perform in reviewing specific agreements. The tool proves to be a key factor in employee retention.
Determining the number of reviewers for the initial team is challenging because it is unclear how many out of the several hundred client field office locations will forward agreements to be reviewed. Additionally, the overall workload fluctuates and can be impacted by seasonal factors, backlogs that occasionally build up in the field, and other factors. Therefore it is important to have a flexible workforce to meet the changing need.
Project Management/Metrics
Lumen Legal uses its Royal Oak, Michigan corporate headquarters as the work-site for a team of between five and fifteen reviewers, based on workload. The project manager is an attorney who has supervised document reviews. She is instrumental in developing the training manual, training the reviewers, supervising and tracking reviewer’s performance and providing administrative supervision on the project.
Work activity measurements for the project include:
• Agreement review turn-around time per document,
and per reviewer
• Pages reviewed per hour, and per reviewer
• Agreements reviewed per day, and per reviewer
• Reviewer score based on contract parameters
• Category of defects or errors, per reviewer
Result
The client communicates to Lumen Legal that they are pleased with the quality of the agreements reviewed, and requests that Lumen’s project manager visit their primary location to assist in training a small core group of reviewers that continue to perform the agreement review function. Lumen also develops a quality control program for them to utilize. The client provides a written recommendation to a professional association in regard to Lumen’s ability to accurately review agreements and meet the client’s ambitious turnaround objective.
Seasoned Project Attorney Reduces Medical Manufacturer’s Legal Spend for Review of Agreements by 50%
Platinum Partner Group members perform high-level tasks on an as-needed basis.
SITUATION
A large, global manufacturer and distributor of medical and surgical supplies and technologies seeks a project attorney to work on a part-time basis reviewing and negotiating a wide range of agreements, from software licenses to supply contracts (including outsourcing). The task requires a seasoned corporate attorney with a background and experience similar to that of their in-house attorneys.
SOLUTION
Lumen turns this order over to its Platinum Partner Group, a national network of experienced attorneys who are interested in utilizing their expertise for discrete legal projects. Lumen Legal implements its detailed and systematic process of searching for and clearing attorney candidates.
An attorney is selected who has over 15 years of in-house experience in the review, drafting and negotiation all types of agreements, including:
• IT-related agreements (telecommunications, software licenses, technology services agreements, privacy, outsourcing agreements)
• Marketing, advertising and sponsorship agreements
• IP work (trademark prosecution, copyrights and case management)
• Corporate governance
• Real estate
• Securities
Result
The attorney begins working for the company on a per-project basis, averaging eight hours per week. The company reduces their legal spend by approximately 50% as a result of using this highly-experienced attorney, and reports a high level of satisfaction with his work.
ABOUT THE PLATINUM PARTNER GROUP
Part-time project employment often meets the workload and lifestyle preference of seasoned attorneys, allowing clients to tap into highly-experienced talent very cost-effectively.
Lumen Legal’s unique Platinum Partner Group (PPG) includes former GCs and AGCs, law professors, attorneys who are balancing family obligations, and other senior attorneys who want to scale back on their hours and responsibilities. These professionals are interested in applying their experience to higher-value tasks. Savings to the client are typically 50% to 70% for work that otherwise would cost $250-400/hr. PPG recruiters work proactively to identify and contact candidates, including hard-to-find professionals for unique projects. Areas of PPG expertise include M&A, contracts, IP, privacy, regulatory compliance and environmental law.
