During the height of last August's ILTA>ON conference, General Motors' assistant general counsel Suzanne Miklos explained to a virtually assembled crowd how her legal department used certain key metrics to cut its list of preferred outside counsel from 900 names down to 19. "When you are using 900 law firms, you don't have a strategic partnership with your firm. You have individual practice groups deciding who they are going to use, without consistent practices when it comes to the firms you are using, how you are using them, budgeting [or] diversity," Miklos said. General Motors isn't the only legal department looking to refine its list of preferred counsel. Legal departments across the country are reevaluating their outside spend as they look to insource processes like e-discovery and explore the virtues of alternative legal service providers (ALSPs). But culling a provider list can't be all madness and no method. While some in-house teams are following General Motors' lead and using metrics around billing or location to help inform their decisions, others are keyed into how firms are using tech to innovate the delivery of services, or even just looking to trusted colleagues for recommendations. Here are four ways that legal departments are evaluating which outside counsel to retain.