Welcome to the re-launch of the Global Legal Solutions digital hub; the culmination of many years developing innovative new products and plans to make your legal solutions more efficient and cost effective.

With its focus on Legal Operations, Startup Legal Support, Legal Manpower and our traditional law firm, we at GLS are proud to introduce the next generation of law.  Our new websites deliver on the same commitment to disrupting the status quo, but are further optimised with a more comprehensive offering and a redesigned user experience.

We’ve been convinced for many years that traditional law is broken and that the only “viable” future for in-house legal teams is for them to be able to do more themselves with less resources. So,  we’ve been busy working on exactly how in-house teams can efficiently and effectively rise to this challenge.

To help legal teams achieve what at first blush appears to be the impossible, we have been expanding what was already the leading legal operations platform on the internet. Not only do we now have more than 800 instantly accessible legal team resources – we also provide Legal Team Transformation & Support Plans to help your team optimise its performance. Choose from plans ranging from Bronze to Gold, tailored for your team. And shop with ease from our tech enabled array of over 800 legal products in the GLS Legal Operations Centre - which itself has been overhauled to better reflect the perspective of the in-house legal community.

Feel free to schedule a time for one of our experts to run you through just exactly what’s on offer.

We are excited to have you on board.  

Matt Glynn, CEO

GLS has just been nominated as a Finalist for the:

Middle East Legal Awards 2020: “Innovation through Technology | Private Practice”

So we would like to share our journey through this Awards process with you - not least of which because of the support you have provided us to date.

Here are what we feel personifies the GLS brand of innovation:

• We launched The GLS Legal Operations Centre - the most comprehensive legal operations resource platform across Middle East, Asia and Africa - access is also entirely free
• We have helped countless in-house legal teams ("IHLs") achieve external spend compression ratios of 10:1.  I.e. every $1 an IHL team spent on GLS tools resulted in a $10 saving for their external budget
• We helped transform countless IHL teams (both MNC and sole regional counsels), to digitise their operations and to enhance their value recognition within their businesses
• We made sure every solution & resource was affordable to any IHL team globally by offering flat, non-discriminatory pricing that is not more than 20% of what a traditional law firm could offer
• We shared our Proprietary Thinking on how IHLs can make resourcing decisions as part of a strategic, transformation agenda
• We made cutting edge legal tech affordable and accessible to all businesses (including contract automation, AI billing review, automated compliance dashboards and AI based contract review)

Thank you very much to the MELA Awards Committee - we are proud to have built a business characterised by the above.

Think about the quality of cars, air travel, TVs, mobile phones, clothing, medicine … they’ve all gotten better, whilst becoming more cost accessible.

GLS is pleased to be able to show the world that technology is capable of achieving the same "better quality at lesser cost" outcome in the legal industry.

First, we automated world class legal documents and took them online for you to access any time and for around 50% of the cost that would be charged by a decent law firm.

NOW WE ARE DISRUPTING OUR OWN DISRUPTION

Now, within less than 8 months of launching GLS Legal Docs™, we have reworked our technology and refined our proposition.

Now, our growing range of world class legal docs costs around 10% of comparable market prices.

If we offer a legal doc through GLS Legal Docs™, there is now simply no more excuses for a bad version of that document to ever be circulated again!

Our world class online library of automated legal documents now includes:

• Basic legal Docs (e.g. board and shareholder resolutions) for US$19
• High Utility Commercial Docs (e.g. service agreements) for US$299
• Complex Policy Docs (e.g. privacy policies) for US$499

Regardless of the document type – it should always be GLS world class

TRY IT FOR YOURSELF

Well, it is at least true to say that “Legal Tech” is a theme that has been dominating news and thought in the legal industry of late.

After centuries of being some of the slowest adopters of technological innovation, it appears that we have finally reached a “turning point” such that Legal Tech will be a key force defining the next chapter of legal industry’s evolution.

In this article we will be focusing on what we consider to be one of the most promising areas of Legal Tech – contract review powered by artificial intelligence (“A.I.C.R.”).

A.I.C.R. is being widely touted as both the saviour of and end of the lawyer. We certainly have a view on which outlook is correct!

With all the hyperbole around we wanted to “cut through the fluff” and point to where the real innovation is happening and how that innovation can be most productively harnessed by in-house teams of any size.

So with this article we seek to give some:

• real insight into what is the current “state of play” of A.I.C.R. technology; and
• practical insight into how that technology can be incorporated into a lawyer’s day-to-day work.

Explaining the jargon

In the same way that the term “drone” seems to now refer to everything in the air that had previously been called a “remote controlled [x]” the term “A.I.” is being used so frequently now, that it is often hard to know what exactly is being talked about.

So for clarity, “A.I.” in the context of the Legal Tech being discussed in this article refers to the combination of 2 distinct technologies:

“Machine Learning” and “Natural Language Processing”

“Machine Learning” refers to a piece of software that can be taught/trained, without the need for explicit programming.

That is, the application is trained to look for patterns in data that it is presented with, and learn from those examples to increase the chances that its future decisions will be “better”.

In the context of Legal Tech this “learning” typically falls into the subsets of “supervised” and/or “reinforced” machine learning.

Meaning that the datasets presented to the software are “labelled examples” and ideal behaviours are reinforced within a specific context to maximise performance.

As an example, GLS LegalSifter (our A.I.C.R. solution) is presented with examples of “indirect liability” clauses (circa 10,000 examples) with the characteristics of a “successful outcome” being continuously identified and reinforced.

Natural Language Processing (“NLP”) refers to the interaction of computers and human language. With the objective of getting the software to read and ultimately “make sense” of human language in a valuable way.

This is a very hard thing to achieve. Overcoming the ambiguity and imprecise characteristics of human language is a difficult thing to translate into an algorithm.

However, NLP essentially boils down to applying algorithms to a language set in order to identify and extract the natural language “rules” that can be converted into a form that computers can understand.

The Result

By combining Machine Learning and Natural Language Processing together, A.I.C.R systems such as GLS LegalSifter result in software that is trained to look for and identify “legal concepts” and provide in context advice.

This is analogous to having an incredibly advanced version of the beloved “Ctrl + F” function.

The difference being that, for example, the software is not just looking for the words “indirect liability” but rather it is looking for anywhere where the “concept” of indirect liability appears (regardless of the specific words that are used to express it).

Other uses for A.I.

This article is about A.I. improving the efficiency of contract reviews / document analysis.

However, for the record it is also worth noting that many efforts are currently also being made to apply A.I. to:

• Due Diligence – i.e. performing due diligence with the help of AI tools to uncover background information.
• Litigation Analytics – i.e. using A.I. to provide statistical probability forecasts of litigation outcomes.
• Intellectual Property – i.e. using A.I. tools to analyse large IP portfolios and drawing insights from the content.
• Electronic Billing – i.e. using A.I. to compute lawyers’ billable hours and combat “time loss” (the bane of so many “traditional” firms).

Debunking some Common Myths

A.I. will replace lawyers	In the same way that the Excel spreadsheet did not replace accountants, A.I. is not a lawyer replacement. A.I. is a lawyer “enhancement” in that it is a tool to be used by lawyers to get more done better, safer, faster and cheaper.  The view taken with GLS LegalSifter is that a Lawyer + an Algorithm is better than either by itself.
A.I. is easy to use	Yes and No. Like driving a car - at first there are too many actions, too many instruments and too much to coordinate, but after some practice (ideally with an instructor) you have the car moving along effortlessly. Users will typically experience a productivity “J-Curve”. That is, their productivity will likely diminish the first few times they use an A.I.C.R. tool – as time will be spent learning how it works and how best to use it.  Ultimately however, systems like GLS LegalSifter are very easy to learn. So typically by the 5th / 6th document reviewed, users notice very significant productivity gains.
A.I. costs a fortune	Actually, yes it does... to develop. Making a good A.I. system is very difficult, very expensive and needs collaboration with a cutting edge institution of the likes of Carnegie Uni. However, the best A.I. systems (like GLS LegalSifter) are now being sold as SaaS. So set up, licensing fees, server capacity and maintenance are all available to “end users” for less than the cost of an Adobe product license.
A.I. can automate document production	No. Clever software engineering is used to create document automation (e.g. GLS Legal Docs). However, this is not “A.I.”. Rather “Automated Document Production” is created by "real lawyer intelligence" working with software engineers to design logic pathways + user interfaces + input criteria + predetermined outputs.
A.I. software is plug and play	Yes and No. A.I.C.R. systems like GLS LegalSifter can work “out-of-the-box”. However, it is most productive when you use it in coordination with your essential “low tech” contracting infrastructure.  So take the time to populate your A.I. system with your Group Legal Policies, Clause Banks and Playbooks – which if you do not already have – then you should.
Tech hyperbole generally	A.I. is “hot right now” and its promise for Legal Tech is very compelling.  However SaaS reps and marketers have, sometimes, also reached a point of self-caricature.  Remember, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
A.I. can fix your contracting processes	A.I. as a tool is an “accelerator” or “enhancement” not a replacement of your legal review processes. If you have done the ground work to build good low-tech contracting infrastructure – A.I. will make these processes work faster and better. If your contracting processes and infrastructure are garbage - A.I. will just make that infrastructure produce garbage outcomes more quickly. Read THIS ARTICLE on how best to get your “low tech” right before your reach for the high tech.

A.I. vs Your Day-to-Day Operations?

In our experience, the businesses that have most effectively and productively incorporated A.I.C.R. into their contracting infrastructure have implemented at least 1 of the following process flows.

We believe that in the not-too-distant future, the vast majority of lawyers will never look at a complex document without the help of A.I.

Again, the point to emphasise here is that a Lawyer + A.I.C.R. is there to:

• ensure that nothing is missed - meaning that work can be delegated to more junior staff (or done by sleepless staff) to enhance margin but with the risk of “human error” being removed ;
• reduce the “review time” needed for a lawyer to physically get through a document. Thereby freeing that lawyer’s capacity to negotiate truly key issues and contribute strategically to driving the deal forward; and
• ensure that your contracting tools (e.g. Contracting Policy, Clause Bank, Playbook etc.) are efficiently and consistently applied across your contract portfolio – even when you are dealing with third party paper.

Is A.I. Worth It?

For better or worse (obviously for the better!), lawyers will not be eliminated anytime soon… 

However, A.I.C.R is increasingly becoming an indispensable tool for those lawyers because, realistically, the following benefits can’t be ignored:

• Consistent application of Group Legal and Compliance policies
• Shifts lawyer time from “issue spotting” to "risk assessment" and "strategic advisory"
• Significant reduction of time required to review documents and provide responses
• A.I. “learns” so retention and effective utilisation of “deal memory” is enhanced
• Significant reductions in human error
• Tools can be calibrated for both professional and non-professional users
• A.I. adopters better understand new contract support function which 
  increasingly is defined by A.I. tool competencies
• Enhanced junior & non lawyer training by providing instant "in context" advice

In summary, by helping lawyers sift through large amounts of data quickly and safely, A.I.C.R. systems such as GLS LegalSifter can enable lawyers to provide better client outcomes faster and therefore cheaper.

To help you assess whether those productivity gains are worth the costs of A.I.C.R. we include the below feedback from GLS LegalSifter for your consideration:

One of the greatest sources of inefficiencies (and frustration) inside an In House Legal (“IHL”) team is the lack of a world-class legal template library, despite universal agreement on the benefits they deliver.

A standardised world-class legal template library is one of the single most productive resources that any IHL team can develop and yet most internal attempts to create one either fail or fall well short of the mark.

Law firms are engaged on an ‘as-needed’ basis to draft templates, but what is produced more often than not misses the mark and involves great expense. Or has your experience been different?

Regardless, in the context of transformation, IHL teams must again look at this category of critical legal resources and achieve maximum productivity leverage – ideally with a minimal resource commitment.

In this short blog article, we will share with you:

• a re-cap of the benefits of a best practice template library;
• what most IHL teams’ template libraries tend to look like;
• the 5 top reasons why most teams fail to develop a best practice template library;
• our Top 10 principles for developing a best practice legal template library;
• a premium audit tool that you can download (for free) to help you start to build your own world-class library; and
• how GLS can help you efficiently and effectively deliver a “World Class” library to your business.

If a world-class legal template library has eluded you – you are not alone. Nine out of ten IHL teams are dissatisfied with the performance of their legal template libraries - this blog tells you what you need to do.

The benefits and legal team transformation

Operating a best practice template library is quite simply a bedrock principle of any IHL team and is an essential step in an IHL team's transformation journey.

The benefits of maintaining such a library include:

• expedited contract generation which in turn delivers strategic deal momentum;
• high user familiarity, easy navigation and easy negotiation;
• driving a more consistent application of approved group legal policy principles;
• facilitating more consistent and leveraged training opportunities to up-skill users;
• becoming a single source of approved legal templates;
• providing greater risk mitigation control over 3rd party contracting scenarios;
• driving faster deal closure and more reliable contract administration with more contracts concluded in writing;
• the potential to leverage new contract automation and review technologies;
• significant reduction of the "lawyers time" spent assembling new agreements on a case-by-case basis; and
• setting the stage for exponentially greater legal team efficiencies.

In summary, its sets the scene for the delivery of “business enabling” contracting support – i.e. it helps your business get deals done better, faster, cheaper and safer.

See our recent Blog – Top 10 Legal Docs – The Workhorse for our analysis of the benefits of the kind of “business enabling” contracting that can drive legal team value recognition.

What do most template libraries look like?

Sadly, the vast majority of businesses are not operating best practice template libraries and the above benefits remain beyond their reach.

Indeed, most template libraries are characterised by:

• a mess of ad hoc templates pulled together from independent authors/sources of disparate quality;
• uncertainty amongst users as to what templates should be used in any given situation;
• templates that lack consistency across boilerplate, structure, clause progression and schedules – items that should usually stay the same across most contracts;
• templates that do not consistently give your business an “optimal” starting position;
• templates that cause negotiation drag as irrelevancies are needlessly reviewed and debated;
• templates requiring significant customisation before being ready for deployment, thus slowing down deal momentum;
• templates that are not balanced and so consistently take too long to agree with a counterparty;
• templates that are stored in multiple and decentralised locations resulting in inconsistent use or even non-use;
• too many variations of each legal agreement (e.g. different services agreements for each service scenarios when a single template would work for most scenarios);
• templates that have not been updated in a long a time, resulting in them being dated by reference to best practice, brevity, market practice, local law, etc; and
• templates that are not ready for automation or wider technology leverage.

Invariably, such template libraries fail to win the confidence of the business.

In the face of the above challenges, it is not uncommon for unapproved decentralised libraries to appear throughout a business and usurp the legal team altogether.

Why?

Given the irrefutable benefits that flow from a best practice template library, the obvious question that begs to be answered is:

“why are so many IHL teams unable to get around to implementing best practice template libraries?”

Well, the short answer is that in the “real world” of an IHL, the task of whipping templates into shape has historically never been an easy task.

The main reasons for the failure of a best practice template library to emerge are as follows:

1. Time: IHL teams are just too busy "being busy" and attending to "business as usual" to find the time to undertake this exercise – this is by far the number 1 reason and as more is expected from IHL teams, finding that "free time" becomes even more difficult;
2. External Cost: traditional law firms cost too much and have a propensity to complicate these types of assignments – especially when business is now demanding shorter templates that are easier to use;
3. Herding Cats: trying to get all internal stakeholders into the same room – let alone getting them onto the same page or aligned on the same clause – is a challenging exercise;
4. Legacy Issues: teams tend to inherit templates and changing them can frequently be a politicised event – the legal team boss or the affected business units actively resist change, being content with the “devil they know”; and
5. Policy Deficiency: 8 out of 10 IHL teams do not have a documented and standardised contracting policy that would provide the essential policy direction for a truly standardised template library.

If you are nodding your head in agreement with these reasons then, in our experience, you will be doing so alongside the vast majority of in-house lawyers.

The good news is that the GLS Legal Operations Centre is loaded with numerous solutions to the above challenges.

Before that though, we would like to share with you the Top 10 Rules that you can use to create your own template library.

Top 10 Rules For A World Class Legal Library

Here are our Top 10 Rules – the very same that we apply to the maintenance of our world-class, fully automated online legal libraries in the GLS Legal Operations Centre.

1. De minimis: a world-class library consists of the bare minimum number of templates needed to cover the 80% (volume/type) of contracting scenarios faced. More templates is not more – it often just leads to more mess.
2. Contracting Policy: your template library should deliver a uniform legal and compliance risk profile so you must have a documented “Contracting Policy” – without this your library will not be optimised or defined by reference to a common, authoritative standard.
3. Clause Bank: first into your library must be a Clause Bank that makes up 75% of any agreement – i.e. clauses that cover Boiler Plate, Interpretation, Legal and Definitions. Your Clause Bank must “bake in” your Contracting Policy.
4. Users: templates libraries must be built with the end user in mind – which is not always the legal team – it is often the commercial leads, the project implementers and the contract administrators. So keep your templates super simple.
5. Standardisation: standardisation drives a world-class library and should occur at every level of your templates - definitions, look & feel, numbering, structure, clause progression, boilerplate and schedule level should all be consistent;
6. Usage Rules: your library must include a fixed set of rules governing usage scenarios, access, legal review and editorial control … and in time, ideally, how the templates should be negotiated;
7. Centralisation: there should only be one legal template library in any organisation – the power of a “single source of the truth” is a great ally when delivering efficient, compliant and reliable contracting solutions;
8. Checklists: you do not always get to work on your own paper so for every contracting scenario where you cannot assert your own terms, you must have a potent checklist to efficiently review third-party paper;
9. Maintenance: your library must be built for maintenance efficiency – if you have leveraged the power of standardisation, edits can be efficiently propagated across a library and drive perpetual improvement; and
10. Technology: your legal templates must be prepared so that when the time is right – they can yield even greater efficiency outcomes by the use of technology – i.e contract automation, contract management systems, etc.

You and your library – what can you do?

In the context of IHL transformation – optimising the performance of your legal template library is now a must – its productivity "ripple effect" is immense, with many outcomes that can be empirically captured.

Accordingly, it is time for all IHL teams to develop strategies to improve the performance of their legal template libraries.

Here are 2 ways GLS can help you:

If You Do it Yourself:

Step 1: GLS Best Practice Library Checklist: if you wish to upgrade your templates yourself – please download our Best Practice Library Checklist (see download link below) - a tool that enables a detailed audit of key library assets.

Step 2: Visit the GLS Legal Operations Centre: to access a wide range of modular Template Libraries and solutions for every aspect of assembling a world-class legal template library.

These solutions will massively reduce the time, cost and effort required to create your own best practice template library.

• GLS Contracting Policy™: your business’s contracting positions across all key legal risk provisions all in 1 document.
• GLS Clause Bank™: a repository of approved contractual clauses to cover 75% of any agreement, that precisely reflect your legal & compliance requirements.
• GLS Checklists™: a comprehensive checklist of essential issues, making rapid review of third-party paper a truly simple task.
• GLS Playbook™: a contracting support tool that instantly equips your contract negotiators with a world-class knowledge of i) how each key clause works, and ii) how to effectively negotiate those clauses with counter-parties.
• GLS Automation Readiness™: a proprietary methodology that leads you through the entire life-cycle of the automation process to help you achieve implementation success.

If You Let us Do It:

GLS can develop for you a customised world-class legal template library.

GLS has developed world-class template libraries for some of the largest MNCs globally. We utilise a bespoke methodology that allows for user-friendly templates to emerge.

Our products are rapidly emerging as the pre-eminent sources of truly world-class legal documents that can be accessioned online 24/7/365 at totally disruptive price points.

We now offer you the choice of:

• Full library access
• Access to specific categories of precedents
• Single precedents
• Supported Packages

Journalist Cat Rutter Pooley of the Financial Times wrote some incredibly kind words about GLS and our ongoing quest to innovate the legal industry. Her Special Report was released alongside the confirmation that GLS had been shortlisted as "The Most Innovative Law Firm in the Asia Pacific" and is reproduced below.

 GLS would like to extend its sincere appreciation to the Financial Times for its recognition and to Cat for her generous praise and kind words. Whilst GLS's primary motivation has always been, and remains, to make world-class legal services more accessible to businesses, it is obviously very gratifying to know that our efforts in this regard have been noticed and recognised.

Financial Times Special Report - Law firm Experiments in Getting Things Done

Cat Pooley’s Review of GLS Law Firm – Shortlisted as the Most Innovative Law Firm Asia Pacific 

While some leading firms have backed the growing law-tech scene, other developments in the region have been driven from outside the traditional law firm structure.  “Rejecting technology and efficiency is a logical step when you rely on the billable hour” says Matt Glynn, a former private practice lawyer who was spurred to found Global Legal Solutions (GLS), a tech-driven business based out of Singapore.

GLS offers its clients both legal advice and technological answers to legal problems. Firms have experimented with alternatives to charging by the hour, such as value-based billing or fixed-fee arrangements, but the time sheet remains at the heart of most private practice business models.

GLS’s law firm arm operates differently, however. It uses a technology platform to help its lawyers, most of whom completed their training (and at least 5 years PQ) at international firms, to answer what the company describes as the “80 per cent of legal problems all businesses have” for 20 per cent of the cost.

“We don’t do the publicly listed deals,” Mr Glynn says, “because most companies don’t. For “bet-the-farm” mergers and acquisitions deals, there is no one better than a Slaughters or a Linklaters . . . But they have no business going in and charging $600 an hour for reviewing an employment contract,” he adds.

The GLS Law Firm innovation is not simply a question of offering external legal professionals to clients as needed to help them cut in-house salary bills. GLS does that, but Mr Glynn says: “You can only do cheaper manpower once.”

It has instead also developed sets of templates, legal policies and negotiation playbooks, plus technology that can automate other common processes for clients, as well as offering add-on technology to help troubleshoot for in-house counsel once the initial work is done.

Moreover, it supports smaller businesses that lack the internal resources of global firms.

“We’re still trusted advisers. We’re just now free from time sheets, with a new platform and new working practices, and we are solving challenges,”

Mr Glynn

Visit the GLS Legal Operations Centre

What is a Services Agreement?

The Services Agreement is the “work horse” legal agreement of the global business community, facilitating millions of essential commercial service interactions each day, but all too frequently its true “business-enabling” potential is not realised.

Parties looking to provide services like to get paid, and parties receiving services only like to pay for services properly provided. Given such obviously aligned interests, Services Agreements should perform reliably – but all too often they don’t.

Most businesses feel that the Services Agreement contracting process takes too long to conclude, often involves too much legal expense and generally results in sub-optimal delivery, or in the worst-case scenario, litigation from contractual disputes.

In this article we share with you the basic insights that can allow you to better harness the business-enabling potential of the humble Services Agreement.

A “business-enabling” Services Agreement that can be agreed between parties with minimal time, cost and fuss can be accessed here.  Given how critical it is to the conduct of business, every business needs an efficient Services Agreement solution.

Create your custom Services Agreement by clicking HERE

The Role of the Services Agreement

The Services Agreement allows businesses to source essential services or skills which a business is unable, or less well placed, to provide for itself. Almost all businesses rely on another business for the provision of services at some point.

From a holistic viewpoint, the documentational universe of a service provision arrangement typically includes:

• the Services Agreement: the basic terms and conditions upon which the services will be provided and payment is made.
• the Purchase Order: an instrument under the Services Agreement allowing the customer to call for service provision under the Services Agreement or one which describes such services, and includes its own legal terms and conditions.
• the Service Level Agreement: either a standalone agreement or an instrument within the Services Agreement that articulates the specific service levels,     how they are measured and reported and what happens if they are not attained.
• the Master Services Agreement: an overarching agreement that governs the provision of a range of services on pre-agreed terms that can be available to a company or group of companies, frequently operating globally.

Depending on the level of sophistication of a business – a service provision arrangement might comprise some, or all, of the above. However, it all amounts to the same thing – a business needing services support and the service provider looking to be paid for that support.

Unquestionably, the Services Agreement, as one of the most essential forms of legal co-operation between businesses, is just as important to smaller businesses as it is to multi-national companies. All businesses need a robust Services Agreement solution.

The Benefits of a Services Agreement

The benefits of a “business-enabling” Services Agreement are as profound as they are simple – the parties get out of the agreement what they intended when they went into it.

Both parties benefit from a well-defined Services Agreement. The Services Agreement keeps the relationship within the agreed parameters and if properly constructed, motivates and incentivises an accountable form of delivery that keeps the parties aligned.

“Without question, every business needs a robust Services Agreement in order to drive effective, productive and efficient business engagement."

If businesses can implement more effective service provision arrangements (i.e. outcomes achieved) in a more efficient manner, the net contribution to the overall level of business activity of each party, and the global economy, would grow exponentially.

So given the evident benefits of a “business-enabling” Service Agreement, why then does this all too frequently prove elusive? The answer is that parties all too often are placing negotiation effort in the wrong areas.

Why do Services Agreements fail to perform as they should?

The irrefutable reality is that most Services Agreements do not fail to deliver a lack of clever words included in the contract by lawyers. The root cause of failure is far more basic than this.

Most Services Agreements fail to perform as hoped because the parties fail to reach a clear and mutual understanding on the following essential matters:

• What is to be provided and by whom?
• How is it to be provided and by when?
• How proper service delivery will be recognised?
• What happens if the services are not properly provided?
• How much does it cost and when is payment required?

Whilst painting with a broad brush, there are three key factors why both parties' attention are not focussed enough on the above “essentials”:

The Rush: all too often parties think a deal must be signed “now” at the expense of clearly articulating the above essentials. A “business-enabling” deal will only ever emerge when alignment on essential points emerges – so take your time.

The Leverage: Service Agreements are mostly produced by the service provider, who would typically leverage your needs for a prompt solution to their advantage by insisting on asymmetric legal risk terms.

The Lawyers: lawyers tend to direct the focus on what happens if things go wrong and not on what it will take for success to occur. Planning for risk eventuality is not wrong – but it cannot crowd out the opportunity to encourage successful performance.

Getting what you need from a Services Agreement means reviewing the Services Agreement to ensure that it deals with the essentials whilst securing sensible legal risk allocation in a time frame that keeps up the vital deal momentum.

How can you achieve a “Business-Enabling” Services Agreement?

With the Services Agreement being one of the absolute fundamentals of a strong business, including a “business-enabling” Services Agreement template in your arsenal of corporate assets is essential. Fortunately, getting it right is not as difficult as you might think.

Given that a Services Agreement is concluded hundreds of thousands of times per day, there really isn’t any magic in how to conclude a good one. However, for the reasons described above – optimal service-based contracting frequently eludes the parties. 

What if there was a different way? What if all the essential pre-sets for a “business-enabling” contract - good industry practice, acceptable industry risk allocation - were already dialled in so that parties can focus on the basics?

“What if you could adopt or start with a Services Agreement template that allowed the parties to focus their energies on the essentials of service delivery?”

The Global Legal Solutions automated Services Agreement delivers precisely this - and in minutes. By following an online interview, a world class Services Agreement can be produced for you in minutes and allow you to be focussed on the essentials.

If focus is not placed in the right areas, the opportunity to conclude business is itself in jeopardy. The inability to conclude a contract quickly can result in the opportunity going cold.

A Services Agreement from a traditional law firm can cost thousands of dollars, and in many cases, tens of thousands of dollars, and when customisation may be required with each piece of new business, that too can result in significant annual expenditure.
 

A traditional law firm may charge you thousands of dollars and take days or weeks to turn around a Services Agreement.  The Global Legal Solutions platform takes minutes and only costs USD $799 and includes a 30 minute expert consultation.

To build your own Services Agreement, dialled in to all the things that matter, allowing you to tailor the agreement to your country of operation and business needs, click here to begin.

Few would argue that costs are a huge barrier to accessing external legal support. However, those with budgets point to a more practical obstacle, namely the ‘time cost’ of engagement.

Many In-House counsel share the common challenge of it simply taking too long to agree on scopes of work, obtain reliable quote(s), and therefore being unable to engage external support in real time.

If it takes too long to engage external support then accessing their capacity and expertise ceases to represent a viable resourcing strategy - placing further pressure on the In-House team.

Accordingly, an In-House external counsel management strategy that not only manages external provider costs but ensures that external providers are mobilised rapidly is in and of itself a valuable resource.

In this piece, we identify the legacy challenges associated with engaging external providers and outline strategies to help make that process more efficient, including using GLS Quick Quotes™.

Try GLS Quick Quotes™ - a fully costed legal proposal in 30 minutes.

The Challenge for legal counsel

In most cases need for external support arises on short notice and the support is needed in a hurry. Almost every brief requiring external support is time-sensitive.

Yet the process of engaging external support invariably involves a process that is itself time intensive and tends to look like this:

• Preparing a scope of work
• Identifying appropriate providers
• Sending briefs
• Clearing conflicts
• Responding to clarifications
• Waiting for finalised proposals
• Comparing different proposals
• Raising your own queries
• Receiving clarifications
• Reviewing updated proposals
• Appointing provider
• Finalising the engagement
• Project/matter kick-off

The 'time cost' In-House teams incur working through the above steps can be significant and increases exponentially in the case of international transactions and new market work.

Ironically, the pressure that In-House legal counsel face to reduce external costs by sourcing through a multi-provider strategy (e.g. usually 2-3 quotes) results in increased ‘time costs’ for each engagement.

What In-House counsel get back

Ask any In-House lawyer and they will express amazement at how different, and at times, incomparable, the responses from different providers can be to the same request for services.

Making an “apples to apples” comparison of service provider proposals is not always possible, particularly where different pricing and project assumptions are used.

Whilst the notion of a “panel” would alleviate some of the above difficulties, very few businesses operate a panel given the restraints it places on sourcing competitively.

All too often the In-House team elects not to engage external support and assumes the workload itself – adding further to its resource crunch and potentially denying it the expertise it might require.

 

 

Tips for driving efficiencies

Whilst much of the above process engagement process is inevitable, there are things that the In-House team can do to expedite many parts of the process, including the following:

• Initiate Early: raise your request for support as early as you can
• Scope: get this as precise as possible to reduce the potential for clarifications
• Assumptions: define the assumptions providers can use regarding the scope of work
• Deliverables: clearly state the deliverables that you wish to receive
• Pricing: insist that all providers use common pricing assumptions that you provide
• Clarifications: aggregate and communicate all queries to providers at the same time
• Format: dictate the format for response to allow for a straight-line comparison
• Minimalism: don’t ask for things you don’t need – you will need to review it
• Template: develop your own standard template for requesting proposals

It is paramount that the required scope of work be defined correctly as if you do not know what you are asking for, how will you know when you receive it.

Another way for In-House teams

In-House teams need to focus on the precision of their requests and demand disciplined responses from their external providers in order to make qualitative and efficient appointments.

Additionally, GLS has totally disrupted the time it takes for any business to receive a fully transparent, fixed price legal support proposal via GLS Quick Quotes™ - our online quotation system.

GLS Quick Quotes™ delivers to you:

• a fixed price quotation for your specific transaction
• complete transparency around scope of work, deliverables, assumptions and pricing
• a proposal typically delivered within 30 minutes (where all information is provided)
• an opportunity to see what world class legal support looks like at a disruptive price point

For any common legal needs that most businesses might encounter, GLS is able to provide a fully costed support proposal that observes the above principles in around 30 minutes.

FIXED PRICE QUOTES IN 30MIN

Legal Service Providers are a resource category that must be performance managed to achieve as much for you as possible – See GLS External Counsel Management™.

Contracts are the essential record of what parties agree and yet most end up signed, filed and forgotten - and usually reflect a painful, tedious and expensive contracting process.

On the other hand, the contracting process that starts with a really well written contract can deliver real 'business enabling' benefits to the parties including:

• significantly reducing the time required to complete a deal
• making a massive contribution to realising the commercial goals of the deal
• reducing the risks of dispute and their costs should they occur
• serving as a vital repository of important corporate memory

GLS has launched Legal Templates so that businesses can achieve the kind of efficient contracting process that genuinely helps businesses to get transactions done better, faster, safer and cheaper.

GLS Legal Docs™ is another demonstration by the GLS Group of how combining technology and legal content can eliminate the barriers that deny businesses access to world class legal support.

In this article we will introduce Legal Templates and examine:

• what defines the hallmarks of a “good contract"
• the true cost you face from using low quality agreements
• how contracts drive “business enablement”
• how traditional firms must re-think how they charge for their templates

We would also like to invite you to try Legal Templates for free - with a single click - and experience document automation in 4 languages.

WHAT IS THIS AND HOW DOES IT WORK? 

GLS delivers access to an online, curated and automated library of 70+ world class legal documents that address the most common commercial transactions faced by businesses globally.

This is not just a traditional precedent library - this is an automated library of precedents that will draft, edit and amend themselves into the contract/policy document/legal document that reflects your preferences!

Legal Templates allows any business anywhere to generate a world class legal document at a fraction of the cost that a traditional law firm would charge for the same.

Legal Templates operates on proprietary contracting automation software, into which the GLS Group has invested millions of dollars of contracting IP and decades of “best practice” knowledge.

Our technology works by guiding users through a short online interview that extracts the user’s legal preferences and commercial objectives.

These preferences and objectives/data points are then used to automatically generate a world class first draft of the desired agreement.

Each document in the Legal Templates library has been engineered with a total commitment to “contracting process efficiency” by experts with decades of experience at the world’s best law firms.

Legal Templates isn’t just about rapid first drafts – it’s about producing quality documents that drive the realisation of time, cost and quality efficiencies throughout the contracting process and project.

Each Legal Template also comes with a 30-minute consultation with a world class legal advisor whose sole remit is to ensure that the user’s goals for the document and/or project are realised.

Available 24/7/365, each document in GLS Legal Docs™ is constantly updated to keep in line with GLS’ own “best practice standard” at a price point that is a fraction of what would be charged by a traditional law firm.  

A 'BUSINESS ENABLING' CONTRACTING PROCESS - WHAT DOES IT LOOK LIKE?

Top quality first drafts of legal documents contribute to a “business enabling” contracting process that allows a business to experience the following:

• a clear and continued focus on desired outcomes – the “what are we trying to achieve”
• documents that are easy to work with – that can be understood, amended, reviewed and administered with ease
• documents that set the deal up for success by being absolutely clear on each party’s respective rights and obligations
• key-stakeholder time not being diluted by “white noise” issues/negotiations
• external consultants being used only for matters that genuinely require their expertise
• the power of “plain language drafting” to quicken understanding and the contracting process
• the building of a cross-party deal rapport that sets the groundwork for a successful long-term commercial relationship

THE PROBLEMS SOLVED BY OUR LEGAL TEMPLATE OFFERING

Poor quality legal documents create significant time, cost and quality inefficiencies. Indeed, bad first drafts are notoriously hard to recover from.

The spill-over consequences of poor quality first-drafts are often greater than what most people will ever imagine, and include:

• damaged goodwill and potential mistrust between parties, as a result of drafts that do not reflect the sought-after commercial position (i.e - are they reneging factor)
• costs incurred as a result of negotiating-in requirements that have been overlooked (typically this is even harder than negotiating out errors)
• time wasted by both parties as a result of negotiating-out the numerous “weeds” present in poorly drafted clauses
• the projection of an image of sub-optimal professionalism by the authoring party, which can impact bargaining position and credibility
• time wasted in reviewing and negotiating non-controversial sections of a poor draft – at least 85% of any agreement should not be controversial
• payments to lawyers to review poor drafts – these payments are genuinely expensive as lawyers/in-house teams need to spend more time to review poor drafts
• even more payments to lawyers and time wasted by senior management, in order resolve disputes resulting from ambiguous wordings and contradictions

Beyond all of the above, poor drafts may often end-up becoming entirely redundant as their densely packed legalese typically ends up simply not being read by anyone in the business beyond the legal team.

Put simply, if you do not start with a top quality first draft then you are denying your project a 'business enabling' contracting experience.

For the in-house lawyer, the following could hinder the production of a high-quality first draft:

• the time it takes to instruct external counsel being as significant as the cost
• a lack of in-house precedents, or in-house precedent libraries that are sparse, poorly maintained and not automated
• internal users reusing the “last deal’s precedents” with the result that errors and irrelevant provisions get replicated
• the inefficiencies of trying to “tweak” the last “similar” deal takes on a life of its own compared to directly addressing the unique needs of the current deal and achieving a bespoke fit
• internal users using their own “document libraries” that don’t reflect the group’s authorised legal position and are not fit for purpose
• the in-house lawyer eventually being made to provide a first draft from scratch by himself, at the expense of large amounts of time and costs

Legal Templates: for a totally inconsequential price point, allows businesses to mitigate all of these challenges and drives a contracting process that is genuinely “business enabling”.

WHAT DOES A GOOD AGREEMENT LOOK LIKE?

A good agreement that positively adds to project or goal realisation, as well as proactively drives contracting process efficiencies, has the following characteristics:

• it uses friendly, plain and easily understood language
• it uses consistent and concise language
• its draws from a clear but disciplined dictionary of defined terms
• there is consistency around the complexity of clause details and mechanics
• there is balanced and proportionate risk allocation
• there is clarity around performance obligations (i.e. the who, what, why, when and how)
• there is clarity around the respective rights of the parties (e.g. what happens if performance is not delivered)
• technical or operational matters are not blended into front-end legal terms
• schedules serve as clear operational chapters for unique subject matter
• it is as short as it can possibly be whilst getting the job done properly
• it is capable of being understood by anyone
• it is capable of being easily translated into other languages
• it is free of technical legal language and concepts.

 

Each and every Legal Template strictly observes these world class drafting principles and in so doing delivers a document that can help you drive contracting process efficiencies.

To illustrate, below is an excerpt from a template: 

A THOUGHT FOR THE LEGAL INDUSTRY

For the GLS Group, as legal industry disruptors, making world class legal support available at a fraction of the cost charged by our competitors is just what we do – it is our business model, and we embrace it.

For the traditional legal industry, however,  the achieving the GLS position is less palatable as time sensitive complexity has historically been what drives the profitability of their time-based engagement model.

‘Long winded discussion over whether the ’quick brown fox jumped over the log' or whether ‘the log was jumped over by the quick brown fox’ have long proved irresistibly profitable for many lawyers' 

However, in an era of abundantly available efficiency technologies, traditional law firms must necessarily re-evaluate their relationship with the contracting process if they are to survive.

GLS believes that:

• firms must “let go” of the notion of charging excessively for basic legal document production - just as architects did when hand drawn blue prints gave way to CAD
• first draft contract preparation is no longer the exclusively domain of the legal practitioners – IT enabled systems can do much of the same work, in much less time
• a firm’s ability/willingness to give affordable access to high quality templates is a direct indicator of how effectively they can aggregate and leverage their expertise for a client’s benefit
• firms must recognise that anything that can be reduced to an “automated workflow” is in fact no longer “lawyering” and so they should stop seeking to charge clients for it

Traditional law firms may find these observations threatening – but GLS feels that these principles serve to make our industry more accessible to clients and allows lawyers to return to a genuine “trusted advisory” role.

Our Legal Templates are making world class legal documents available so that deals can run faster and smoother, and client resources can be spent on genuine “advice” rather than mere document production.

A SUMMARY OF THE BENEFITS OF AUTOMATED DOCUMENTS

Automated document libraries, such as our Legal Template, mean that legal documents can:

• allow for human capacity to be directed at genuinely “value adding” tasks
• be generated to a high quality quickly and in a manner that offers unlimited scalable output
• materially reduce the risks of human error
• be generated and accessed 24/7/365
• create and contribute to deal momentum through speed of production
• reduce and even eliminate production costs
• be easily managed as a “single source of truth” for approved documentation
• allow for tailoring to occur within pre-defined and accepted margins
• be generated to actually match a client’s legal and commercial preferences
• be efficiently updated in line with best practices and/or governing laws

 

To show how Legal Templates delivers world class legal documents cost effectively and quickly, GLS now allows anyone, anywhere to try creating an NDA, entirely for free!

Whilst enjoying this free trial, note that this “garden variety” legal contract is often produced by traditional law firms for USD$500+….

Within seconds of completing an online interview, a world class NDA will be delivered to you, entirely prepared and ready for use – and in any of the 4 languages that GLS currently offers.

A user’s experience of this NDA trial exactly replicates what is experienced by users of our Legal Templates - i.e. it shows how easy it is to achieve speed, cost savings and quality efficiencies all at once!

To reinforce the power of technology-enabled service delivery, GLS will release the NDA trial experience in as many as 8 languages, with Danish, Mandarin, French and Spanish to follow soon.

FURTHER OPTIMISING THE CONTRACTING PROCESS

Our Legal Templates are merely the tip of the contracting efficiency iceberg.

Whilst a superb legal template drives massive contracting process efficiencies, that process can be optimised even further.

To enable such optimisation, GLS offers a range of products that assists in-house legal teams to embed efficiencies throughout their business’s systems.

These products including:

• GLS Clause Bank™: this contains a wide range of best practice clauses to support your negotiations
• GLS Playbook™: this is a guide for non-lawyers on how to negotiate the key clauses of a businesses’ contracts
• GLS 3rd Party Paper Checklists™: this is a tool for an organisation’s contracting team, that ensures that any “third party paper” still meets the standards of their business's authorised contracting positions

 

These solutions can all be found in our industry leading, legal operations centre:

GLS Group, the world’s leading legal industry disruptor, focuses on disrupting the traditional law industry that prevents sustainable access to effective legal support to 97% of business globally.

GLS’s disruptive business model has already reduced legal costs by more than 80% and it is now set to achieve much more in 2019 having invested into NZ based document automation company, Automio.

In a year where GLS was shortlisted by the Financial Times for the “Most Innovative Law Firm Asia Pacific – New Business and Service Delivery Model” award, GLS is now launching its most disruptive offerings yet.

Following its investment into Automio GLS is now stripping out around 95% of the costs that SMEs and Start Up face when trying access legal support via its GLS Total Legal Support™ offering.

INNOVATIVE LEGAL TECHNOLOGY

After 4 years of trialing document automation solutions, and even dabbling in building its own software solution, GLS signed off on a round of investment into Automio in October 2018.

Whilst initially starting as an Automio client, GLS quickly realized that Automio was the right technical partner, a disruptor in its own space, and shared GLS’s vision of what the future of law should look like.  

GLS had found that the contract automation space centered heavily around the Microsoft Word application, which whilst familiar and comfortable to most users, hadn’t really change much in 17 years.

With Word as your base platform, the net result is a bit like connecting a fibre optic cable to a piece of tin can telephone and expecting communications miracles...

Ironically, this is somewhat like the traditional law practice conundrum where legacy practices stifle emergent potential. By contrast, Automio operates its own proprietary platform free of such issues.  

REVOLUTION, ONE CONTRACT AT A TIME…

GLS’ decision to take a significant equity stake in Automio reflects its strategy to develop, promote and partner with legal-technology providers that can enable genuine legal sector disruption.

For GLS: a “genuine” disruptive legal technology is not one that just increases law firm profitability – but rather it is a technology that makes legal support, in its widest sense, more accessible to all businesses.

GENUINE DISRUPTION IN PRACTICE

Over the past 3 months GLS has been working with Automio to perfect the technical delivery of GLS’ most disruptive legal support solution to date – the GLS Total Legal Support™ series.

GLS Total Legal Support™ delivers a legal support advisory experience to Start Ups and SMEs that was previously only accessible to MNC’s … but at around only 5% of the cost.

For a fixed monthly cost, GLS Total Legal Support™, which can now be accessed 24/7/365, anywhere with an internet connection, consists of:

• different tiers of fully automated libraries of essential legal documentation (powered by Automio);
• a dedicated Legal Affairs Director to deliver the “personal advisory touch”;
• an “always on” support hotline for real time queries and emergencies; and
• access to flexible levels of international legal support to match business need.

 

GLS Total Legal Support™ customers get the legal documents they need in unlimited quantities AND their own in-house legal team to direct strategy and provide fixed levels of support resourcing.

For any area of need beyond the “80%” i.e. the day-to-day needs covered by the support plan, customers can access the GLS’s 120+ other offerings, which all cost around 20% of a comparable provider.  

DIRECTION AND STRATEGY

Matthew Glynn, GLS Group Managing Director, said:

“With our new technology-enabled offering we can address 80% of a SME’s needs on a permanent basis – we can quite literally be next to the client all of the time, making a difference in real time.

However, we are doing it in a way that means that lawyers can focus on what they should be doing – lawyering – and we are not charging the client for what technology can do.

Rather than charging for time, we leave it to our ‘technology elves’ to produce the underlying documents at practically nil cost to the customer."

Glynn added:

“Many of my former colleagues in the legal industry say that GLS is creating a race to the bottom with this kind of pricing – a view which I find somewhat incredulous and a tad self-serving.

Traditional law firms simply do not  have any interest in doing anything for US$99 per month, let alone take care of 80% of a Start Up or SME’s legal needs.

However, with our technology we can do this, and do it profitably. We have used technology to support parts of the global economy that have not been able to access it.”

OPTIONS, OPTIONS, OPTIONS: FULL TIME SUPPORT OR JUST WHEN YOU NEED IT

For businesses that still prefer to buy legal contracts “as they go”, GLS has also launched a Legal Docs channel on its extraordinarily popular online GLS Legal Operations Centre.

GLS Legal Docs now has some 67+ world class legal contracts and documents that are available at our entirely disruptive price points – around 15% of what leading legal firms would seek to charge.  

Each document also comes with a 15 minute consultation, if this is needed.

The full menu of Legal Docs is available here. 

COME TEST THE WATERS

To show how incredibly easy it is to work with a true legal automation tool, GLS has taken the unprecedented step of allowing anybody anywhere to try creating a NDA, entirely for free!

To enjoy a free trial experience click here and enjoy it knowing that this “garden variety” legal contract is typically produced by traditional law firms for USD500+

Within seconds of completing an online interview, a world class NDA will be delivered to the user, entirely prepared and ready for use – and in any of the 4 languages GLS currently offers.

The NDA Trial user experience exactly replicates the experience of a user of the full GLS Total Legal Support™ libraries in order to show just how quickly and easily world class documents can be produced.

To reinforce the power of technology enabled service delivery, GLS will release the NDA trial experience in as many as 8 languages by the end of Q1 with Danish, Mandarin, French and Spanish to follow.

GLS Group will shortly be announcing its move into AI based contract reviews in which it will similarly be offering a free NDA trial AI review to demonstrate the power of disruptive legal technologies.

Moving forward, GLS will continue to update and develop its libraries to address the ever-developing needs of the world’s Start-Ups and SMEs. 

GLS will also soon launch a disruptive offering that create customised legal bots for larger MNCs with ambitions of owning their automated contract libraries.

ABOUT GLS

The GLS Group is the world’s leading legal industry disruptor. Founded in 2014 by a core team of highly recognised market leaders from top-tier global law firms (together with some of their clients).

The GLS Group, now has over 200 staff globally and was shortlisted in 2018 by the Financial Times for its “Most Innovative Law Firm Asia Pacific – New Business and Service Delivery Model” award.

GLS’s mission, since its inception, has been to disrupt the second half of that statement and over the past 5 years GLS has now brought the cost of world class legal services down by more than 80% through its “New Law” offering.

On Tuesday of this week GLS Founder, Matt Glynn, attended INSEAD’s MBA programme (Singapore Campus) as a guest lecturer and shared some of the insights gained by GLS as it works on disrupting the legal industry.The lecture asked what aspects of the legal industry could be disrupted and how could budding entrepreneurs access business enabling New Law support to get more business done?

Is the billable hour misaligning the interests of law firms and clients?

What would the size of the addressable legal market be, if most businesses could actually access it??

What would constitute “disruptive technology” in the legal industry?

If lawyers are paid so much, why does the legal industry suffer such a high attrition rate?

Many of the INSEAD students had worked with or used traditional law firms and had some familiarity with traditional private practice law firms (and the frustrations of using them).

These students were therefore incredibly eager to hear that affordable solutions exist and that they are incredibly easy to access!

Matt started by explaining how GLS was created and why it was structured, from the outset, to be fundamentally disruptive to the legal industry.

By way of an example of this disruptive approach in practice, Matt introduce GLS’s newest, and potentially most disruptive new offering – “GLS Total Legal Support” (“TLS”).

TLS is a subscription based support package for start-ups/SMEs, that combines a world class library of automated contracting precedents AND legal advice.

The entry level “Bronze” TLS package can deliver in excess of USD65K worth of support over a year at a cost as low as USD99 per month!

"In effect, GLS TLS makes the kind of in-house legal team that traditionally could only be afforded by large MNCs, accessible to even the smallest of start-ups - all for less than what many spend on Starbucks each month."

Matt went on to explain, that only by breaking away from the traditional model and offering an alternative structure for legal services, such as TLS, could the interests of GLS and clients really become aligned.

GLS’s disruptive approach allows it to help far more businesses get far more business done whilst creating a far larger addressable market, which ironically, Traditional Law has never looked to serve.

The presentation finished off by “lifting the curtain” on how businesses can be engaging with both “Traditional Law” and “New Law” players in a way that lets them get a lot more done with a lot less resources.

In particular, Matt explained 5 key tips that all clients should be employing if they want clear and more practical advice (whilst reducing their legal spend by >50%):

1) Ask “Is your question so special”?

For 80% of any business’s needs, the issue has arisen and been answered comprehensively before. Seek out a New Law response to your question.

For such issues, there is no point in paying traditional law firm rates for a law firm to “reinvent the wheel”.

2) Decide what you want to pay for

The traditional law firm fee model is based on every dollar being split 33% for the lawyer, 33% for Opex and 33% for the profit pot.

So, decide what you want to pay for – consider looking for the lean firm and look for the boutique advisor if you don’t want to pay over the odds.

3) Understand what you are getting?

Law firm advice is prepared in a Professional Indemnity context which necessarily entails significant qualifications and caveats – caution is clearly required.

By way of a simple comparison: a formal legal opinion is PI backed, but the “yes or no” advice given by an in-house lawyer is what actually get’s the business “done”.

4) Recognise the nature of the law

Laws are often prohibitive, not permissive. So, there is often a disconnect when client’s construct their questions in the permissive form.

Businesses could do well to pose their questions on the basis of “is there any clear guidance which prevents what we intend to do?” Such answers are frequently more categoric and more efficiently sourced.

5) Make the lawyer get back to lawyering

Lawyers love to fix things – so let them.

Take your complexity there - but not your project management.

Ask early - late is expensive - but only ask after you have followed the first 4 tips!

THANKS: 

Thank you again INSEAD for the invitation to teach and learn from such an engaging group of Students!

Thank you Alexia Adda (a lawyer at the offshore firm Walkers, and current student of INSEAD) that made this event happen.

The true cost of the hourly rate

GLS believes that more than 95% of businesses globally are unable to access effective legal support either at all, or in the quantities they require – principally because of price barriers.

In Part 1 of this series, we explored how TradLaw’s commitment to the "Have, Cake & Eat" model relies upon clients assuming the cost of operational inefficiencies and overindulgences.

In this Part 2, we highlight a range of inefficiencies frequently present in the TradLaw model that flow as a direct result of TradLaw’s prevailing economic model and ensuing management culture.

The hourly rate remains the primary economic model pursued by TradLaw and essentially makes the adoption of service-based efficiencies an economically irrational choice for TradLaw. 

The associated 'culture' that has emerged within TradLaw management has only further exacerbated the acute inaccessibility of TradLaw to the global business community.

There is nothing funny about the resulting irony which the business community feels every day. TradLaw is actually unable to reduce its hourly rates to where the market needs them to be and yet at the same time it is not ready to let go of the hourly rate model.

We choose to highlight these inefficiencies, and their underlying cause, because the pathway for the legal industry to address and respond to this is clear – for those brave enough to tread it.

The emergence of industry disruptors like GLS (and those we fund) mean the best days of the legal industry are ahead!

We operate at 20% of the cost of comparable legal service providers whilst maintaining the same world-class quality – it’s as simple as that.

Big Law, Big Bills

Much of TradLaw has vigorously pursued short-term profit maximisation, while remaining wedded to a stunning array of inefficient practices that clients (and lawyers) have had to bear.

TradLaw and especially Big Law, has, whether due to tradition, ego or otherwise, allocated vast quantities of capital into platform features that do not create or readily translate into client value.

Consider the inefficiencies below: we will start with the more recognisable inefficiences and then move onto the more systemic structural issues, the chief among which is the billable hour.

As you review these inefficiencies – ask yourself – in how many other industries would they be able to exist before being eliminated by competitive market forces?

Inefficient: Premium CBD Premises

Before cars (and certainly before faxes, internet and emails) law firms needed to be located close to the courts and their clients, who were often clustered in the CBD.

The same cannot be said today where face-to-face meetings are increasingly infrequent. Lawyers can go months without actually seeing a client in person.

The cost of premium, and often self-aggrandising, CDB location premises are, in today's technological environment, an unnecessary indulgence which create very little client value.

Nice, but not necessary!

Inefficient: Ignoring transformative technology

Few industries have proven more resistant to the introduction of service delivery technologies than the legal industry.

In most other sectors, technology has been embraced to drastically increase output and lower production costs for the client/customer's benefit and preserve one’s competitive edge.

TradLaw, and particularly Big Law which can afford game changing technology, has failed to embrace technology where it matters, i.e. at the point of service delivery.

Why has this been the case? Simple. The longer it takes a TradLaw firm to complete a task (i.e. the more hours sold) the more it gets paid. 

"It is economically irrational for TradLaw to embrace efficiency as long as it remains wedded to hourly rate architecture."

TradLaw’s business has centered around selling the market what it increasingly does not want - time. Which leads us nicely to the next point ...

Inefficient: Failure to commoditise

Law is a knowledge-based industry where expertise is merely an aggregation of experience. 

We all know that business want solutions delivered with price certainty. Why then have commoditised, fixed price, knowledge-based products by and large failed to emerge?

The reality is that most areas of law remain static for sufficient periods of time to allow for the development of knowledge-based products and solutions – the wheel does not need reinventing at every turn.

Knowledge aggregation and its ease of access and retrieval is a key indicator of just how efficient a law firm is. It also allows fixed pricing models to emerge – something clients absolutely want.

So, where are these knowledge-based products?

The reality is that commoditised knowledge products do not involve the sale of hours and therefore do not make comfortable bedfellows for the Have Cake & Eat model.

Accordingly, the economies of scale that all other industries achieve from aggregation and volume are not pursued by Big Law and are generally not available to legal industry clients.

Note too that clients essentially want "yes" or "no" answers – "can I do this or not?". If many areas of law permit such responses, then why have law firms not responded to these demands?

Inefficient: Global Full Service Models

Big Law’s 'one-stop-shop' approach, discussed in more depth in our previous article, leads to what we call the "Pac-Man Model".  

Do you remember the Pac-Man gorging on ghosts? Similarly, Big Law's mouth tends to remain open, taking on anything and everything.

The economic imperatives of Big Law creates a gravitational pull away from strategic service excellence to a focus on volume – this leads to firms using their own people/offices even when the expertise/experience is lacking.

For those that have worked at Big Law – you will know that not all offices are equal, but the rates generally are!

Inefficient: Law firm management

"The problem with law firms is that they are run by lawyers!"

Law firms tend to choose leaders from within their own ranks; effectively, Big Law takes its best moneymakers and applies them to jobs they are by and large unqualified to do. 

Ineffectual and inexperienced management, whether global or regional, can bring with it a tremendous cost, which will inevitably be borne by clients.

The stories we could share with you on this one … the firm that bought a word processing system that perhaps two other organisations in the world would use or the Group Head that booked a practice Group Retreat and forgot to invite the other offices...

Inefficient: Ignoring the face time phenomenon

The fairly challenged Partnership Model which actually sees very few people truly benefiting may provide the backdrop to Big Law’s enduring attachment to the practice of "face to face" meetings.

At the drop of a hat Big Law’s partners are the first to jump to embrace the internal meeting, conferences and management retreats – and if some frequent flyer points inure then great!

How do grand auditoriums and international get-togethers with the associated business class flights, five star hotels and so on, really add client value? The answer is they do not.  

Frankly, the costs of the "internal get together" culture make the bills for taxis home after a particular hour, meals, replacement shirts and expenses over weekends, etc. – all seem a tad insignificant.

However, someone has been paying for it – and it hasn’t just been clients – the lawyers working in private practice are also paying the price (more on that in Part 3).

Lets now look at some of the more systemic causes of inefficiency associated with the way in which TradLaw is frequently organised and how it causes structural inefficiencies.

Inefficient: The Partnership Model

Law firms are owned and managed by partners who are primarily remunerated by direct reference to fee generation – a principle that can create both internal and external conflict.

That is, what a partner takes home to spend on his or her family is, by and large, dependent on achieving a personal/group budget. Progression at the associate level follows a similar path.

Organisational and skill deployment decisions by the firm may not always be aligned with the principle of identifying the "best lawyer for the job" or for that matter

The hourly rate is no longer an effective meeting point for those that need legal support and those that provide it.  Query if it ever was?

So, we asked a question:

How can we make world-class legal solutions accessible at a fixed price that all businesses globally can access?

We then built a business around the answer.

Welcome to Global Legal Solutions.  Law Rewritten.

 

The traditional law firm model (“TradLaw”) as we know it is broken; but fortunately, a new dawn is upon the legal industry and its best days are unquestionably still ahead.

In this four-part series, Global Legal Solutions (“GLS”) unpacks the demise of so called ‘TradLaw’ and the rise of alternative solutions for disillusioned lawyers and dissatisfied clients.

In this first article we explain what “TradLaw” is and identify the forces of change that are reshaping the legal industry – taking it into a better place, one where business can actually access it. 

TradLaw does not like change.  Given that there are still a few more years of higher profits within easy “redundancy” driven reach, many players will continue to resist the inevitable.

Nevertheless, the TradLaw model is in a serial state of decay - business cannot access it.        

TradLaw - having their cake and eating it

TradLaw is the classic owner/partner law firm model built upon hourly rate architecture.  Time is the unit of trade, and how much time is sold is the essential management/performance/productivity KPI.   

The model focuses on short-term profit maximisation whilst remaining wedded to a wide variety of inherently inefficient operating practices that actually prevent optimised service delivery.

We call this the “Have Cake & Eat” model – and oh how much cake has been eaten over the years!

For over a century, the Have Cake & Eat model has made TradLaw partners rich.  The resulting costs of legal services, however, have now finally proven too much for most businesses globally. 

The inarguable reality is that even the biggest businesses globally are unable to afford access to quality legal support, either at all or in the quantities they would like.  Or is your business different?

Who are the culprits?

Unfortunately, the Have Cake & Eat model is prevalent across much of the legal industry – most firms are heavily influenced by hourly rate architecture and its associated decision making.

Just how ill-suited this model is for the future is demonstrated by the incredibly short life cycle of Big Law - the legal industry’s response to globalisation – a phenomenon that should actually bring prices down!

Big Law was set up to provide what smaller law firms could not - heavy lift, ‘full-service’ and diverse legal capabilities, increasingly across borders.  It is now the most expensive form of TradLaw.

At its peak, Big Law was only ever accessible to a fraction of the overall MNC business community - principally the investment banks and Fortune 500 type companies.

Despite the appeal of a globalised legal ‘one-stop-shop’, even the biggest global corporates cannot justify the cost, and many have abandoned Big Law for more cost effective alternatives.

The same backlash is faced by most TradLaw operators, whether big or small.  The brutal truth is that the global business community considers TradLaw (and especially Big Law) to be cost inaccessible.  

Access to knowledge has always levelled the playing field and every law firm has an internet connection.  In the case of Big Law, geographic coverage alone cannot and does not justify the fees that Big Law charge.

"The party is well and truly over!"

 

A delicious irony - famine where there ought to be feast

There is a delicious irony in that TradLaw’s model is rapidly approaching the end of its shelf life at a time when global demand for legal support is at an all-time high. 

"Irrespective of the global financial crisis (the “GFC”), the global economy needs its lawyers now more than ever."  

 

Businesses worldwide are choking on increased regulation – it is getting harder (not easier) for businesses to do business, especially across borders.

Yet, paradoxically, supply and demand (being the vast, pent up pool of latent demand that exists globally) is not connecting efficiently via the TradLaw construct.

The problem is not what TradLaw is offering, but how it is being offered.

The legal industry must find a new way of connecting supply and demand and TradLaw is not the answer.  Fortunately, new ways are emerging, and organisations like GLS are leading the way.

Take just 90 seconds to see how we are making world-class legal support available on a global basis at not more than 20% of the cost of comparable world class providers. Click here to view video.

The omens of demise

Despite intensifying dissatisfaction with the current TradLaw model amongst clients and practitioners alike, the omens of impending demise are being ignored by most TradLaw operators. 

Sadly, nowhere is the proverbial ostrich's head buried more deeply in the sand than in the case of our old friend ‘Big Law’. 

Much of TradLaw (especially Big Law) is so heavily burdened by its own structural, cultural and economic inefficiencies that its ability to affect a corrective pivot to where clients need it is limited.

A century of the Have Cake & Eat model reliably delivering super profits has given many TradLaw operators a false sense of confidence, especially when PEP can still be easily increased.

Flat lined markets continue to be dismissed by many as being “GFC down” aggravated by a “cyclical temporary oversupply of lawyers” to be corrected by rounds of redundancies and early partner exits.

And a new phenomenon has emerged - excess capacity within Big Law’s ranks is now being bundled into the so-called premium brand, low cost offering.  Slightly cheaper units of time are now available.

Is this enlightened management, market insight or simply redundancy without the charge?  To us it sounds like Big Law being Big Law – people being sacrificed at the altar of profit.

Dividing 10 by 3 instead of 5 to keep the PEP on the rise can only go on for so long.  Self-cannibalisation in the absence of the desire or ability to affect a strategic structural response is not sustainable.

Change within TradLaw can only come from the top but its leaders are typically in their sunset years; taking a PEP hit “for the team” in order to effect the necessary structural change is hardly likely.  

How do you think that “home-front” conversation will play out? “Honey I shrunk the pay-cheque, but the next generation are going to be in better shape”.  Let’s revisit the headcount shall we!

Our profession deserves more than this.

"Darwinian evolutionary theory has not granted the legal industry an exemption, it has just been a bit slow to arrive."

So what next?

As any good story requires, even in our forlorn industry, hope springs eternal; Darwinian evolutionary theory has not granted the legal industry an exemption, it has just been a bit slow to arrive.

Our industry is becoming far more accessible.  GLS, and others like us, are utilising new business models to remove time and cost as barriers to businesses needing the highest quality legal support.

As an industry, our best years are ahead.  It has never been a better time to be a lawyer - not only is there a lot of work available to be done, the work we must do is important.

Years of quantitative easing/fiscal stimulus has done little to lift the GFC cloud – only businesses doing business can do that – and we (the lawyers) must be accessible to make that happen.

In our next article we will identify the inefficiencies that Big Law could easily eradicate and bring legal costs down by 80%.  That is what we have achieved at GLS.  

We are 20% of the cost of Big Law – yet offer our clients access to the same quality of lawyers in the same markets.  In fact, most of our lawyers have joined us from Big Law. Whilst Big Law is firing, GLS is hiring globally.

In subsequent articles we will show how separation from the billable hour and reconciliation with disengaged employees is the key to the modernisation of the legal industry.  

Finally, we at GLS categorically dismiss Big Law’s claims of there being an over-supply of lawyers -  the only thing in over-supply is over-priced and cost inaccessible lawyers! 

Welcome to GLS - Law Rewritten

GLS Law will only offer support where we know that we can do so in a way that represents a "by far and away market leading" support proposition. This means that being just a "little bit better" is not good enough.  Our support proposition must at all times be a lot better than what is generally offered. This is how we are guaranteed to stand out.

Our commitment to market leading support is absolute and inviolable - our whole business has been built from the ground up to achieve this result. If our support proposition does not represent a "by far and away market leading" proposition then we will cease to offer it. Support from GLS must and always will be a superior option.

So, what makes the GLS Law support proposition market leading? Well, the simple answer is our 'Optimal Efficiency Framework' - it governs all the decisions we make and how we deliver our support.

Our commitment to 'optimal efficiency' is unwavering and resides in our DNA. From our organisational design through to all our operational methods - we do not engage in activities that do not create 'optimally efficient' client outcomes. We are committed to making our world class support increasingly accessible to our clients - big or small - without price discrimination.  Not only do we have to deliver ever improving quality, we have to make sure that that quality of our support becomes increasingly accessible to all businesses.

Being optimally efficient is as much about what we 'refrain from doing' as it is about 'what we do'.  

Our 'Optimal Efficiency Framework' requires that how we operate and what we offer must strictly meet each of the following requirements:

• focus: we focus on specific areas of support (corporate, commercial and special projects) - being the areas of need faced by most businesses - we cannot be all things to all business
• simplicity: our support proposition must be simple to implement and provide an immediate and effective support to the challenges faced by our clients
• client-centric: our support (and what we charge) must be free, and remain free, of any elements that do not benefit the end customer
• efficient: how we operate must be free, and remain free, of the historic, structural, cultural and economic inefficiencies that are endemic to Big Law platforms
• verifiable: our support must tangibly and demonstrably increase the effectiveness of each clients' existing legal resources
• procurable: our offering must be an imminently sensible and justifiable procurement choice
• accesible: we must be accessible to both large and small businesses
• alignment: we must maintain as near to 100% interest alignment as possible between us, our employees and you, our client.

So, there it is - this is what makes shapes every aspect of GLS Law. It is only when all of the above conditions are met that we put our name, GLS Law, to the support proposition. If we are unable to offer a support scenario that complies with our 'Optimal Efficiency Framework' then it will not see the light of day. 

You may be asking "why would we just give it away like that?". Well, that's a good question. The reality is that most law firms will be unable to pivot in the direction taken by GLS Law in any event. Their entire model is based around an hourly rate architecture which prevents strategic adaptation. An inefficient platform cannot produce efficient results. An hourly rate offered from an inefficient platform is required to subsidise those inefficiencies.  

We believe that much of the legal industry is riddled with structural, cultural, economic and historic inefficiencies that go back more than a century.  This means that despite the huge hourly rates Big Law charges, they still 'hit the bone' pretty quickly when they try and move their prices to where the market requires it. Again, an inefficient platform cannot produce efficient results - not without someone paying the price. 

We believe that the only way the industry can end its free-fall/free fall into further 'inaccessibility' is if more players move into the provision of genuinely accessible service delivery. New things must be tried. We are happy for others to follow our lead. The more that do so the better our industry will become. 

At the heart of our offering is combining 'outstanding talent' with 'superior processes'. We then apply the transformative effect of technology enabled solutions. Technology-enabled legal support makes 'better', 'faster' and 'cheaper' (i.e. - 'optimal efficiency') possible for much of the legal services continuum. To be clear - quality is greatly improved whilst decreasing the cost of access. This has worked in every other industry so why not law? The legal industry cannot and should not continue to resist the transformative impact of technology. 

GLS Law's culture is to introduce 'technology' into the design and implementation of our legal support scenarios so as to deliver exceptional 'optimal efficiency'. Not only are our lawyers more accessible, but we give them ways to achieve greater productivity. We give them the resources to allow them to focus on lawyering and not other tasks which do not constitute lawyering but are frequently on charged as such (e.g. typing, proof reading, etc.). GLS Law strives to deliver greater quality and reducing costs of access. 

GLS Law cannot change the entire legal industry by itself - we want others to join us as we create a better industry - one that business can be proud of. It is for this reason that despite making 'by the hour' lawyering far more accessible than it has ever been - our focus is on doing away with the hourly rate wherever we can. This is why we are working so hard in the fixed price solutions space. Stay tuned for more exciting announcements in this regard... 

For those who are wondering what has happened to the traditional legal industry, please take a look at the following short clip which provides some outstanding insights into an industry bloated by its own greed.

The clip lends support to GLS' view that an almost universal dissatisfaction now exists with and within the industry. 

Take a look at the clip and let us know what you think ...