Partnership Objective
JLL’s Global Chief Legal Officer, Alan K. Tse, wanted to introduce a more competitive and streamlined process for engaging outside counsel in order to control and reduce external legal spend. He knew that generic procurement tools were not the answer, so he worked with his Head of Litigation and Legal Ops to find a best-of-breed tech solution. He needed a product that was tailored for engaging outside law firms, would help drive more AFAs, allow for a standardized evaluation process, and would be easy for JLL’s attorneys to use. It also had to deliver a clear ROI.
The Challenge
The process of engaging outside counsel was not only time-consuming and inefficient, it suffered from a lack of transparency and competition. Even though JLL had negotiated competitive firm hourly rates, it was always unclear what the total cost would be by the time the matter was complete. Traditional hourly billing made it difficult to tightly manage the litigation budget.
The Solution
JLL implemented PERSUIT’s competitive bidding platform. By doing so, JLL was able to formally evaluate its top-tier preferred firms in a mini-RFP process, obtain fixed fee proposals within a matter of days, and leverage a one-hour auto-negotiation period on a matter-by-matter basis. During the auto-negotiation period, firms were able to see their price ranking in PERSUIT and could then revise their prices to improve the competitiveness of their proposals.
The results
During a one-hour auto-negotiation period, there were 6 combined price revisions, with some firms reducing their total proposed fees by as much as $171,000 (41%).
This process saved JLL $103,000, calculated as the difference between the accepted price and the initial market average price.
