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WHAT WE'RE WATCHING

LESS IS MORE - It sounds logical, right? Whittle down your outside counsel roster and negotiate better rates with the law firms that are left. But, as Law.com's Phillips Bantz reports, fewer doesn't necessarily mean cheaper. Sometimes quite the opposite, in fact. "I've not heard any strategic discussion on consolidating the number of vendors," said Thomas Barothy, former group legal chief operating officer for global investment bank UBS. "Too many people out there have a point of view that 100 is better than 900, that 50 is better than 100." He added, "That's really dangerous."  Uber's former head of legal operations, Ken Callander, founder of legal department consulting services firm Value Strategies in San Francisco, tells his clients not to bother with "general convergence programs."  "If you do that, you're moving 80% of your work to the highest-cost firms and your costs are going up," he said. "Yeah, you got a bigger discount from those firms, but the overall rate that you're paying is higher."  Medtronic GC Ivan Fong has overseen law firm consolidation, also known as convergence, efforts at his current company and in his previous role as 3M's top lawyer. He noted, "You need enough firms to promote healthy price point competition, yet not so many as to make the lemon not worth the squeeze for the firms."

LUCRATIVE OPERATION - While we're on the topic of stuff that isn't cheap, let's talk about law firm C-suites. As Law.com's Justin Henry reports, chief operating officers and comparable administrative professionals at firms are seeing their pay rival those of equity partners in the post-pandemic era, as their duties have shifted from overseeing day-to-day administrative functions of their law firm to high-level strategic decisions. Defined as base compensation as of Jan. 1, 2022 and bonuses paid through March 1, 2022 for the 2021 fiscal year, the average total cash compensation for COOs and executive directors, based on a survey of 159 law firms, comes out to $418,107, while the range was from $77,000 to $2.7 million. So, no, employing high-level business professionals at your firm is not going to be cheap—but these are not positions to skimp on anyway. "A really good law firm director or COO has to make sure operations are running effectively and smoothly. If you don't have that, nothing else matters," said James Wilber, an Altman Weil principal and co-author of the study. "The really good people in those positions are spending their time helping the firm figure out what's happening in the marketplace and with all the hot button issues firms are facing like competition, what clients are asking for and lateral recruiting and other things that are much more strategic," Wilber said.

WHO GOT THE WORK?℠ - Andrew Moriarty of Perkins Coie has entered an appearance for Oregon Health & Science University in a pending employment discrimination lawsuit. The case was filed July 5 in Oregon District Court by Baum Smith on behalf of Maria D. Prouflis, who contends she was terminated for refusing the COVID-19 vaccine despite asserting her objection due to religious beliefs. The case, assigned to U.S. District Judge Michael H. Simon, is 3:22-cv-00973, Prouflis v. Oregon Health & Science University. >> Read the filing on Law.com Radar and check out the most recent edition of Law.com's Who Got the Work?℠ column to find out which law firms and lawyers are being brought in to handle key cases and close major deals for their clients.