When your company is looking down the barrel of federal litigation that's bet the farm-level significant or that could cost millions to litigate, issuing and executing an RFP can not only help you obtain a range of estimates in terms of cost, but it can also reveal which law firms are prepared to handle the issues you face and achieve the results you want. Leveraging legal data and analytics on top of law firm RFP responses can provide your team with the critical insights you need to find the right firm for the job when your chips are on the table.

While RFPs and legal analytics have been around for quite some time, there are growing shifts with how in-house legal departments and legal operations teams look at procuring legal services to find more value and curb cost increases. With the advent and increasing expansion of organizations like CLOC and ACC Legal Operations, the importance of using legal analytics and uniform metrics to evaluate performance and capabilities has come to the forefront of law firm engagement. This is a continuing trend that's here to stay.

In this article, we'll detail five basic sections to include in your RFP, along with tips and tricks on how to best use legal analytics and specific data points to enhance law firm selection.

What to Include in Your RFP

Forward: Even for law firms you routinely use, it's not a bad thing to remind them of who you are, what your business is, what relevant products you offer and what different types of risk you face. This can be as short as a one page intro, more like a cover letter your law firms can quickly use to gather an understanding of what's involved and at stake.

Timeline: Make sure you clearly outline the deadlines for your RFP—the issue date, confirming participation, response submission, and a decision deadline. If you have a fast-approaching response deadline in your case, consider making your submission deadline sooner so you can plan for the time needed to gather data, obtain internal approvals, or ask follow-up questions.

Scope of Work: If you already know certain deadlines, mention those at the outset. Deadlines are important for law firms to properly allocate costs and resources. It's also important to provide a basic fact pattern, and highlight the issues, laws and regulations you have identified as being pivotal, as well as certain assumptions regarding the representation.

Goals: Beyond laying out the facts, you also want to speak on the milestones and goals you want to accomplish. Whether you think you can win on a motion for summary judgment, are looking to arrive at a certain settlement amount, or are wanting to take your case all the way, let the law firms know to set expectations.

Questions: In addition to questions about pricing, law firm experience, litigation strategy, and the core team involved (see also CLOC Litigation RFP), here are a couple of important questions that can reveal a law firm's capabilities:

  • Please provide legal analytics related to the number of cases your law firm has handled related to this case type, broken down by attorneys listed in your core team.
  • What additional value adds can your law firm provide?
  • Last but not least, how is your law firm leveraging legal technology to improve the client experience?

Finding the Best Firm with Legal Data

When combined with legal analytics, RFPs can take on a life of their own. Legal analytics can be used for supplementing law firm responses, verifying claims on bench strength, and checking client success stories. They can also introduce wild card scenarios.

Beyond just verifying the data of your existing panel law firms, you may discover new firms with as good, or perhaps better, credentials capable of handling your matters. Including these wild card firms in your RFPs can also act as a barometer, presenting you with the opportunity to see how good your current rates are against market/discounted rates. In addition to finding law firms with better experience, it may also come as a good surprise that there are much more savings to be had.

Once you have picked the law firms to include in your RFP process and have obtained responses, the next important steps are to (1) review and analyze the responses, (2) look at your internal data related to the law firms, and (3) leverage outside legal analytics (where possible) to vet law firm experiences and results cited and omitted in their responses.

With legal analytics you can perform veritable background checks on your law firms, and can quickly can determine:

  • How many and what types of cases has a law firm/attorney handled?
  • What and how many major milestones have they handled (dismissals, settlements, trials, etc.)?
  • Who have they represented, and who are their top clients by case type?
  • How long do their cases last on average by case type?
  • What does the core team's work product (briefs, motions, etc.) look like?

For in-house legal departments and legal operations teams interested in technology integrations, using APIs to directly infuse outside legal data is like moving from the Dark Ages to the Age of Enlightenment in one fell swoop. Creating a seamless flow of outside data points into your matter management and spend management systems via APIs not only helps automate data gathering surrounding RFP responses (saving critical time), but it also helps produce even more meaningful legal analytics layered together with your internal data for better reporting.

If you're starting your RFP process from scratch or looking to build out your legal analytics capabilities, what's important to remember is that you don't have to reinvent the wheel to get rolling. There is a mountain of legal data out there waiting to be tapped. Your competitors are using it, so why aren't you?

 

Josh Blandi is UniCourt's CEO and Co-Founder. Understanding the need for automated solutions in the legal space, Josh co-founded UniCourt in 2014 as a SaaS offering looking to disrupt the way court records are accessed and used. Under Josh's leadership, UniCourt has expanded from California State courts to aggregate legal data from hundreds of Federal and State courts, delivering UniCourt's customers access to over 50 million court records.