The worst economic crisis in years is forcing everyone to look for ways to save money, and general counsel are no exception. Some are cutting their internal expenses — not filling an open position, for example, or reducing the travel budget. But the main place that many GCs hope to save money is in their outside counsel spending. So they’re dropping law firms, and demanding lower bills and fixed fees from the ones they keep.
“Maximizing efficiency and saving money is something many in-house departments have been trying to do for the last 20 years,” says Thomas O’Neil III, general counsel at WellCare Health Plans Inc., a Tampa, Fla.-based company that provides claims processing and other administrative services. “But now the economic climate has added urgency to the goal.” O’Neil says that WellCare is “in the process of reevaluating the firms that have done work for us and coming out with a roster of preferred firms, as well as new terms of retention.”
