• 18 May 2012

Legal Spend Reduction Any CFO Can Embrace

Show your C-suite the value of law department management technologies.

Caption|REUTERS/Navesh ChitrakarWhy does the law department think it needs new technology to manage its work when the rest of the company is cutting back?” Recent press articles have chronicled how corporate CFOs are becoming more concerned with controlling legal costs, which each year take an ever- greater bite out of company budgets. However, law departments that want to improve their systems often find it challenging to justify the expense in response to questions from their CFOs. Our new white paper is designed to help in-house counsel bridge this gap by translating legal process improvement into a value proposition that will resonate with the CFO.

In the post-Enron era of Sarbanes-Oxley and other new regulations, the CFO has become a lightning rod for concerns related to the company’s internal financial controls. With increased enforcement leading to possible criminal conviction, as well as substantial financial penalties, compliance with financial reporting regulations has become a central concern in the C-suite. Ironically, because lawyers generally are more attuned to practicing law than to managing the business aspects of law, the law department is often one of the last company departments to put systematic financial controls in place.

When the law department has all of the company’s legal work in a single system, it becomes possible to effectively manage all of that work and to generate complete legal spending and expose financial reports—often for the first time. With the ability to enforce a policy of no payment for legal work that is not processed through the law department system, in-house counsel have visibility for the first time into the company’s entire legal landscape.

For the law department to measure up, CFOs need to become knowledgeable about the effective financial control provided by today’s matter management systems, including electronic billing and auditing. Law departments can provide detailed financial reporting, meeting the same standards that apply to the rest of the company. Download our new white paper Legal Spend Any CFO Can Embrace to learn more.

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