GM headquarters in Detroit (Photo: Linda Parton/Shutterstock.com) GM headquarters in Detroit (Photo: Linda Parton/Shutterstock.com)

Hundreds of law firms had been working with General Motors over the years, according to executive vice president and general counsel Craig Glidden, who said that was far too many. Inspired by CEO Mary Barra's mission to change how GM does business, he and a team of in-house lawyers found a way to whittle down the number of firms the company uses and make sure those firms reflect GM values.

“I think she has really led a transformation of the company in dealing with the future of mobility, whether that be dealing with electric vehicles or autonomous vehicles,” Glidden said of Barra during an interview on Tuesday.

Glidden said as much as the legal department wanted good business partners, he also wanted to make sure the firms fit in with the culture of the company.

“We wanted to extend that to our relationships with our outside firms and try to get those outside firms to reflect the values that we have as a company,” Glidden said.

The Process

“When we started on the journey we had hundreds of law firms that had represented GM over the years,” said Suzanne Miklos, assistant general counsel GM director of operations.

Miklos said GM created a team, with several of the attorneys new to the legal department, to bring fresh eyes to the requests for proposals process. The team's first meeting was in April 2018.

“There were five attorneys on the task force and Craig and one of the other deputy general counsels helped to guide our work,” Natalie Lockwood, counsel in GM's compliance group, explained.

Out of the hundreds of firms that had worked with GM in the past, the team narrowed it down to 60 firms that it sent RFPs to. Once the RFPs were returned there was an extensive interview process. Glidden and other members in the leadership team spent over 5,000 hours interviewing the firms.

By December, 19 firms had been selected to work with GM. Those firms are Baker Donelson; Bush Seyferth & Paige; Crowell & Moring; Dykema Gossett; Eversheds Sutherland (US); Fish & Richardson; Hill Ward Henderson; Honigman; King & Spalding; Kirkland & Ellis; Lightfoot Franklin & White; Mayer Brown; Morgan Lewis & Bockius; Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough; Norton Rose Fulbright US; Ogletree, Deakins, Nash, Smoak & Stewart; Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan; Ricci Tyrrell Johnson & Grey; and Seyfarth Shaw.

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“The way we worked embodied some of the goals that we were aiming to achieve,” Lockwood explained. “Collaboration was a hallmark of what we did.”

Glidden called the process an exercise in agile project management.

“People who are otherwise very busy found time in their schedules to come together and tackle a big problem,” he said. “They did it in a way that was direct and to the point.”

The Values of General Motors Legal Department

Two of the values that ranked high for GM's selection team are safety with diversity and inclusion.

“As an automotive company, our customers are at the center of everything we do and safety is of paramount importance to us,” Glidden explained. “So we wanted to make sure that we partner with law firms that understood the importance of safety to us as a company.”

He explained law firms involved in product liability defense are often aware of ongoing issues, and he wants those issues communicated with the legal department.

“We then share that information with our product engineering organization. There is a seamless flow between the information that is learned in the field and through the litigation arena with our product safety team as well,” Glidden explained.

When it comes to diversity, Lockwood explained firms will be held accountable for who is handling matters.

“Our goals around diversity and inclusion are not merely aspirational,” Lockwood explained. “We are in fact holding the firms accountable in the sense that we're collecting data from them on composition of the teams that will be working on GM matters and the roles that those various attorneys are playing on those matters.”

Miklos further said GM uses an online dashboard that tracks who is working on which project and what their role is. She said GM wants the firms it has selected to work together to develop the best practices for hiring diverse attorneys and putting them on GM's matters but also retaining diverse attorneys.

Glidden said the company wants to clarify it is creating an ecosystem rather than a hub-and-spoke system where GM is in the center and each firm is out on its own, only reporting to GM.

“We really wanted a program where our law firms were not only going to partner with GM to help us, but to also partner with each other,” Miklos explained.

 Glidden said the program is set for a three-year term, however there are no quarterly reviews.

“We are continually reviewing what the data shows,” Glidden explained. “It's an ongoing process. We don't have quarterly review process built in. Our expectation is that all of the firms will meet our requirements. If we find that is not the case, we will revisit it on a case-by-case basis.”