Companies Pressure Law Firms With Procurement Process

As in-house legal departments look to cut costs and reduce inefficiencies, a process through which law firms submit competitive bids for providing legal services is becoming more mainstream.

Request for Proposals (RFPs)—a process more commonly associated with the procurement of other services—hit a 15-year high in 2015 in the legal industry. According to a BTI Consulting Group survey that was discussed in a Jan. 27 blog post, more than half (56 percent) of corporate counsel respondents said they issued such a request last year.

Amar Sarwal, vice president and chief legal strategist for the Association of Corporate Counsel, told ...