Pricing Matters

This week, we take a deep dive into Intersect 2020 which is the True Value Partnering Institute (TVPI) Annual conference, held in Miami in January. You can also enjoy this video recapping the event.

Our guests James Shoemaker and Steven Manton speak to us in their capacity as TVPI advisors. We explore highlights from the Intersect 2020 conference, including key takeaways from sessions on leadership, change management and resilience with a focus on the evolving role of the business of law expert.
The True Value Partnering Institute is a legal industry think tank focused on professional development and thought leadership at the intersection of the practice and the business of law. The Institute has become the definitive community for senior legal business professionals - those responsible for delivering value inside and outside their organizations.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Peel back the onion. Good leaders know their weaknesses and use this self-awareness to improve their relationships within their team and the firm.
• Do you know what keeps the managing partner awake at night? Answering this question can help you break out of your pricing silo and get more involved in cross-functional projects across the firm.
• Avoid solution-jumping. Change management requires that you take time to understand the problem or opportunity first and empathize with the end-user.
• Just breathe! Your ability to be a good leader, deliver value and manage change starts with a focus on mental health and well-being.

James Shoemaker is an Accredited Legal Pricing Professional (ALPP) and certified legal project manager with nearly 20 years of industry experience. In his current role as the Director of Pricing and Matter Management at Miles & Stockbridge P.C., he is responsible for setting pricing strategy, consulting with partners and clients on pricing solutions, and establishing a matter management framework of tools and processes to ensure efficient delivery of legal services. This includes oversight for all the following functions: pricing, rate setting, legal project management (i.e., “matter management”), new business acceptance, and the establishment and maintenance of the required supporting systems and infrastructure for these functions.

A frequent speaker on the topics of legal pricing and project management, Jim’s core focus remains on maximizing the value of legal services by helping align the firm’s pricing and service delivery models with its clients’ legal needs and business objectives.
Steven Manton is a Pricing Director at McDermott Will & Emery LLP. Steven is responsible for the creation and development of the firm’s pricing and legal project management function across all the firm’s offices.

Steven is a highly knowledgeable law and business graduate with a Masters qualification and twenty years of legal sector experience. Recognized as a leading law firm pricing, practice optimization and profitability specialist who regularly teaches and publishes on pricing legal services and building the law firm pricing function.
Steven is active in the legal community and serves on the Advisory Council of the True Value Partnering Institute, a legal industry think tank and is also a member of the Research Advisory Board for the Client Value and Law Firm Profitability Report published by Jim Hassett Phd.

Stephanie Corey is a co-founder of UpLevel Ops, a consulting firm specializing in providing services for in-house legal departments and law firms. UpLevel Ops provides a complete range of Legal Operations support, including IT solutions, Finance and Budget guidance, Talent Management and Development, Benchmarking, Best Practices and Metrics, and Outside Counsel Selection and Management.

Stephanie also founded and is a former executive member of the leading legal operations trade organization CLOC, Corporate Legal Operations Consortium. She is a widely respected veteran in the Legal Ops field.

Most recently, Stephanie has served as the Chief of Staff and Senior Director of Legal Operations at Flex, the second largest manufacturing company in the world. She has spent the better part of her career providing value-added services to Legal Departments, including building and deploying critical infrastructure to enable them to meet their business priorities. Her areas of expertise include Information Technology, System Implementations, Process Analysis and Improvements, Finance, Communications, and Administration.

Stephanie Corey is a co-founder of UpLevel Ops, a consulting firm specializing in providing services for in-house legal departments and law firms. UpLevel Ops provides a complete range of Legal Operations support, including IT solutions, Finance and Budget guidance, Talent Management and Development, Benchmarking, Best Practices and Metrics, and Outside Counsel Selection and Management.

Stephanie also founded and is a former executive member of the leading legal operations trade organization CLOC, Corporate Legal Operations Consortium. She is a widely respected veteran in the Legal Ops field.

Most recently, Stephanie has served as the Chief of Staff and Senior Director of Legal Operations at Flex, the second largest manufacturing company in the world. She has spent the better part of her career providing value-added services to Legal Departments, including building and deploying critical infrastructure to enable them to meet their business priorities. Her areas of expertise include Information Technology, System Implementations, Process Analysis and Improvements, Finance, Communications, and Administration.

Stephanie began her career at Merrill Lynch in Pennsylvania, and after relocating to California, she worked at Bailard, Biehl and Kaiser, an investment firm in Foster City. Once she decided to move into Corporate Finance, Stephanie took a position under the CFO, managing the Finance and Accounting Department at Provident Funding Mortgage Bank.

She later moved to Hewlett-Packard, where she was employed for eleven years as the head Legal Operations Manager, running a large IT and Finance Department. Her most recent role at HP was Chief of Staff to the General Counsel, responsible for managing the daily operations of the Legal Department, working closely with the General Counsel and his reports to develop the strategy for the delivery of technology, finance, and administrative solutions.

Stephanie holds a master’s degree in Business Administration from Lehigh University and a bachelor’s degree in Economics from Wilkes University.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Get the Data in Place. You need to understand what you are spending to be able to make educated pricing decisions.
• Adopt a programmatic approach to outside counsel spend. Set your goals upfront and collaborate with your procurement team to help drive the process.
• Billing guidelines are a tool for conversation. Don’t take an adversarial approach rather use the guidelines as an opportunity to partner with your law firms.

To find out more about Digitory Legal please visit our website at www.digitorylegal.com.

As the US Chief Pricing & Value Officer, Dwight Floyd and his team work with Eversheds Sutherland attorneys and clients to provide superior value by developing and implementing creative pricing and service delivery strategies.

Value is rarely increased through wholesale discounting or telling clients what they need but instead by targeting – actually asking – clients about their specific goals and what they want to achieve. Dwight works closely with attorneys and administrative staff to increase Eversheds Sutherland’s efficiency, effectiveness, transparency, and innovation in a dedicated pursuit of delivering its client’s goals.

Dwight is a former litigation partner and a biologist who brings a different approach to some common challenges in the legal world. As in our natural ecosystem, he recognizes that everything in the legal ecosystem is connected to everything else. His challenge and goal is discovering and revealing to attorneys and clients how those connections can benefit and sustain everyone involved while still conserving resources

Dwight is rated AV by Martindale-Hubbell and is an Accredited Legal Pricing Professional (ALPP) by the True Value Partnering Institute.
True Value Partnering Institute

Find out more about the ALLP accreditation and the True Value Partnering Institute, the premier educational network for legal pricing, project management, and innovation professionals.

TOP THREE TAKEAWAYS

• Understand Expectations. It's the intangibles that make a successful pricing arrangement.
• Process Orientation. Technology can help package information in a way that is easily accessible to both the lawyers and clients.
• It's a Relationship Business. We will continue to see the growth of relationships between legal operations professionals in corporate departments and business professionals at law firms.

Our Guests

Melissa Prince serves as Ballard Spahr’s Chief Client Value and Innovation Officer and sits on the firm's Management Committee and Expanded Board. Melissa focuses on listening to client needs and understanding how each client's business operates in order to make the connection between value and innovation. She oversees the firm's Client Value and Innovation program, which includes more than 20 business professionals focused on creating a customized experience for each client.

Melissa is a frequent speaker, presenter, and author on legal operations topics. She recently launched the Ballard360 Insider blog, which is focused on delivering insights and best practices in legal operations. Under Melissa's leadership, the firm was named to the Financial Times' Most Innovative Law Firms Business of Law, an innovation "Mover and Shaker" by BTI Consulting, and a finalist for the American Lawyer Industry Awards in the best law firm/client team and best business team categories.

Before coming to Ballard Spahr, Melissa held similar roles at two Am Law 25 firms. She is an attorney who, before leaving private practice, managed complex commercial litigation matters. She is a Six Sigma Green Belt, Certified Legal Project Manager, ALPP and ALPM.

Dan Pope is the Director of Strategic Pricing & Profitability at Ballard Spahr and oversees a team of pricing professionals that focus on using state-of-the-art tools and technology to gather and analyze information and evaluate the variables that drive cost.

The team partners with firm clients to develop accurate cost-projections, customize pricing and value-based fee arrangements, establish goals and expectations, and identify preferences for cost efficiency, predictability, transparency, and value.

Dan also leads an ongoing initiative to review the firm’s top clients to ensure firm profitability benchmarks are met. The program focuses on current arrangements, staffing,

• KEY TAKEAWAYS
  • Innovation Philosophy: There is no innovation without adoption! When a new approach isn’t working, you need to be able to fail fast and rethink what you are doing.
  • Competitive Intelligence: It's about giving clients something that they cannot find elsewhere.
  • Regulating the Legal Industry: Change is coming and Law firms need to think more quickly and innovatively about how they are operating.

Gregory J. Kaple is the Senior Director, Legal Business Services, Kaiser Foundation Health Plan. Greg Kaple is a venturer and a strategist known for creating unique business models and solution delivery innovations for complex professional, technology, and services organizations. In his current role, Kaple is transforming the KFHP legal department’s service delivery model to provide affordable access to high-quality legal care. Comprised of more than 80 attorneys, 170 total staff, and a combined annual budget of more than $150 million, the legal department is responsible for protecting KFHP’s $84 billion nonprofit business from risk in an age of unprecedented healthcare industry business and regulatory change. By focusing on core principles of transparency, collaboration, and infrastructure the department is reducing costs, enhancing the quality, and setting a new standard of value-oriented outcomes for KFPH’s members, community, and industry.

Kaple has lead strategy development for such companies as Time Warner, New York-Presbyterian Hospital, Squire Sanders, and WilmerHale. His business ventures have included founding a professional service firm, a media production company, a cloud services provider, and a chain of high-end men’s barber clubs. He has been a member of several University programs with West Virginia University and Ohio University where he created a breakthrough class on Entrepreneurial Sales. Kaple has a Masters Degree of Science in Telecommunications Management from Stevens Institute of Technology and a Bachelors degree in Business Administration from Ohio University.
TOP THREE TAKEAWAYS

• Data is a Game Changer. Legal departments and their panel firms should work in partnership to improve the quality of their data to drive decision making.
• Making it Easy. Communication tools like portals, reference guides, and focused training materials, help your panel firms to understand, digest, and comply with your Billing Guidelines.
• Diversity is a Bigger Priority than Ever. A focus on diverse staffing, work allocation, utilizing the ABA diversity survey data enable, and a commitment to taking action.