In-House Counsel

An extreme reduction of external counsel, done with RFPs

By Rees Morrison

The North American subsidiary of Japan?s NEC Corporation ?whittled its list of law firms from 130 to five? and did so through a competitive process initiated with a Request for Proposal. Counsel to Counsel, May 28 at 4, offers no more about this convergence initiative. On a percentage basis, the casting off of 96 percent of the NEC Corp. of America?s firms is one of the most extreme reductions I have heard about (See my post of Feb. 16, 2008: 26 convergence posts collected.).

If more than one of the five fortunate firms was new to the company, the image I have is that of publicly-traded companies who must change either audit firms or audit partners (I am not sure which) every five years. Maybe companies ought to throw out all the bath water periodically.

Full post as published by Law Department Management on May 05, 2008 (boomark / email).