Lodestone Consulting’s primary areas of expertise include:
- Strategy and positioning
- Performance and value
- Smart client and procurement practices
- Law firm performance management
- Career development and progression
- Financial management and pricing
- Workflow and workload management
- Litigation management
Strategy and Positioning
- Current state assessments and profiling of legal services arrangements
- Analysis of issues and opportunities
- Design of overall legal services framework - in-house and external
- Advising on in-house function, purpose, structure and scale
- Alignment of in-house teams’ services to delivery of the client’s strategic and business goals
- Assessment of qualitative and quantitative value of legal services
- Business plans and strategic plans of in-house teams
- Reporting systems and processes
- Risk management – risks and counter strategies relating to the internal provision of legal services
Performance and Value
- Assessment of overall value for money generated by investment in legal services
- Financial modelling of the value of an in-house team
- Developing performance standards and service delivery standards for in-house teams
- Developing key performance indicators for delivery of legal services by in-house team
- Developing key performance indicators for delivery of legal services by external providers
- Developing robust means for measuring achievement of key performance indicators
- Designing and conducting client satisfaction surveys
Smart Client and Procurement Practices
- Assessing smart client capability and recommendations for development
- Designing workshops and training seminars in conjunction with in-house teams to improve the capability of an organisation to:
- Assess the need for legal services
- Prepare the brief / scope of work to the in-house function and to the external providers
- Develop an estimate of fees relevant to the scope of work
- Project management of legal instructions
- Review transactional value
- Advising on, designing and conducting competitive processes for procurement of legal services
- Demand forecasting and planning
Law Firm Performance Management
- Designing framework for delivery of legal services by external advisors
- Advising on pricing strategies
- Negotiation of law firm arrangements
- Designing performance management and relationship agreements
- Reviewing performance of law firms
Career Development and Progression
- Mentoring to senior in-house lawyers
- Designing competencies, core and technical, for in-house lawyers
- Advising on recruitment and retention strategies
- Development of career progression strategies
- Analysing training needs and designing training programmes for in-house lawyers
- Designing position descriptions
Financial Management and Pricing
- Pricing reviews and comparison to market
- Innovative pricing strategies
- Budgeting internal and external legal costs
- Advising on value based billing
- Financial modelling and analysis
Workflow and Workload Management
- Assessing the demand for legal services
- Identifying drivers of demand for legal services
- Developing criteria for in-house/external allocation of legal work
- Designing briefing guidelines and protocols
- Workload management
- Workflow planning and demand forecasting
- Service level standards and agreements
- Specialisation development
Litigation Management
- Advising on systems and processes for work activity breakdowns and planning of phases of litigation
- Forecasting and budgeting of litigation costs
- Designing reporting and monitoring systems and protocols
- Evaluating litigation support software
Technology
- Evaluation of technology to assist in the efficient delivery of legal services
- Evaluation of case/matter management software and application
- Knowledge management strategies including use of technology to assist capture and retention of institutional knowledge