Rio Tinto's outsourcing initiative with CPA Global
Posted By Rob Millard - 0 Comments -
We all heard back in the midyear about Rio Tinto's initiative to outsource a significant proportion of its in-house legal work to India, in the hope of achieving a 20% cut in legal spend. (See this June 2009 article about it in The Times.) Well, nearly six months on and the arrangement seems to be working rather well. In this webcast, Richard Susskind asks Leah Cooper, Rio Tinto's Managing Attorney and head of the 100+ lawyer in-house team worldwide, how many law firms have been on the telephone to her to find out how the initiative is working and what they can learn from it. Her unbelievable answer? It's not law firms that have been calling at all. General counsel and other in-house legal advisors from across the globe have, but not law firms.
This webcast is a REAL eye-opener. To be clear, this is not about business process outsourcing / back office work, but lawyers from CPA Global undertaking real, substantive legal work, sometimes in conjunction with Rio Tinto's panel of outside law firms, as a natural extension of Rio Tinto's in-house team. The same quality of legal service, at a cost differential of 1:7.
These are absolutely essential insights to assimilate if you are a leader in a law firm that aspires to continue to serve sophisticated corporations in the future, from somebody who is leading the way. Despite its length, I highly recommend that you watch the webcast right to the end. The conversation moves more in the second half to how the arrangement with CPA Global really works in practical terms, and how it has affected the law firms that serve Rio Tinto.
As a footnote : Firms that think that they are going to simply get away with passing on a 10% fee increase to their clients in 2010 .... just don't get it. See Pat Lamb's DejaVu all over: bad habits are hard to break and Susan Hackett's Are Firms Tone Deaf? Why the Push for Rate Increases in 2010? The key, it is clear, must be to find ways to achieve the same or better net income by working differently; not just pushing up rates or working more hours.
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