Doing More for Less

These days, little is of more concern to a company’s legal function than its ability to control the cost of outside legal services. The person who serves as the top manager of a company’s outside lawyers and law firms is often the law department business manager. If performed well, such a position will add significant value to the management of a company’s legal function.

Law firms long have appreciated the benefits of employing executives and administrators to help them manage the business aspects of their practices, and now more than ever their in-house counterparts — corporate law departments — are using business managers to do essentially similar things. The law departments of most major companies have business managers, and for good reason: by leveraging the important but non-legal work required of the general counsel and getting it into capable yet less expensive hands, the cost of administration of the law department is reduced proportionally to the difference in compensation between the general counsel and the business manager.