240 SUPERLAWYERS.COM A TTORNE YS SELEC TED TO SUPER LA WYERS WERE CHOSEN IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE PROCESS ON PAGE 8.
‘HIRE THE LAWYER, NOT THE FIRM’
With a company’s reputation and profits on the line, GCs aren’t
willing to take chances.
“If we’ve been sued in a jurisdiction and don’t have connections
to firms there, I’ll rely on my network and ask others if they have
referrals,” says Maritczak, who recently left Cobalt to start her own
Seattle-based firm advising companies as outside counsel. “I’ll get
referrals from two to three different firms. And I always hire the
lawyer, not the firm. I follow the lawyer. One outside counsel with
us has worked at three to four firms. In that situation, you know
whether or not they’re going to bill you for every conversation you
have.” When one of her favorite outside counsel switched firms,
his rate doubled, but she stuck with him for his expertise and
dependability.
Wynn Segall, who is a partner in the international trade practice
at Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld’s Washington, D.C., office, says
he attracts most of his new business through existing clients, citing
recent referrals in Russia, England and Hong Kong. Although
new business is often generated by a phone call or series of calls,
his team is also familiar with the grueling Request for Proposal
process. “RFPs are a lot of work,” he says.
Jeffrey Tenenbaum, a partner at D.C.’s Venable, agrees. “Our
most extensive RFP was with the American Bar Association. They
were attempting to consolidate their outside law firms. They
had dozens of outside law firms in many areas, with six rounds
of interviews, and lots of different attorneys on the phone. They
ended up selecting us as their principal outside counsel.” What
tipped the scales was his firm’s depth of expertise in a wide variety
of areas that applied well to the ABA’s work as a nonprofit trade
and professional association.
Since competition is fierce, even the most seasoned outside
counsel need to continually market their services. “Business
development is everywhere,” says Segall. “I get out and speak at
conferences and put out articles in publications on a relatively
frequent basis.”
That kind of marketing works. “Firms are not shy about
introducing themselves to us,” says Leslie M. Turner, senior vice
president, general counsel and secretary of The Hershey Company
in Pennsylvania. “We have a strong global presence, with firms in
China, India, Latin America, everywhere. We often go by word-of-
mouth and experience and results.”
Best Buy general counsel Keith Nelsen, based in Minnesota, says
that his team currently has approximately 40 lawyers in-house
as well as relationships with outside counsel, including 10 to 15
outside the U.S., with a select number of preferred relationships,
which is typical for a large corporation. “There’s lots of value in the
firms knowing our business, knowing how to navigate through our
systems and processes,” he says.
‘IT’S WORTH PAYING FOR EXPERIENCE AND EXPERTISE’
More than anything, GCs hire for expertise.
“Their experience, subject matter expertise and depth of
wheelhouse is very important,” says John Page, senior vice
president, chief corporate social responsibility and legal officer
of Golden State Foods, based in California. “Very rarely is there
something new under the sun as it relates to transactional work or
employee relations. Some areas are new and innovative, but most
of the work is not in that space.”
Ona Alston Dosunmu, general counsel of D.C.’s Brookings
Institution, has two generalist go-to firms that she deals with
regularly. “If I’ve been presented with an issue that is both outside
my comfort zone and has some urgency to it, outside counsel can
generally point me to someone in their firm that has seen the issue
199 times. When I need a gut check within hours, it’s worth paying
for experience and expertise,” she says.
Often, that gut-check is Segall, who focuses on international
trade controls, economic sanctions, regulation of foreign
investment, export controls and anticorruption. “For my clients in
Russia, and any in the international markets, I have to understand
the issues at a political and broad policy level, and that just comes
down to everything I consume and read,” he says. “Staying on
top of the law is the easy part. Having an appetite for the subject
matter goes a long way in terms of not missing things.”
Turner says Hershey looks to outside counsel specializing in
evolving areas such as cloud technology and privacy laws instead
of building up that expertise more internally, especially as it’s
grown internationally. “If you look at what the company is doing
today—such as our opening an R&D center in China, building a
greenfield manufacturing facility in Malaysia and the agreement
to acquire the Shanghai Golden Monkey confectionery business
in China—it’s certainly very different from supporting just a
U.S.-centric business,” says Turner. “The demands on the law
department are very different from those of five years ago.”
Tenenbaum says he’s noticed a trend toward in-house lawyers
demanding industry specialization. Companies, in other words,
don’t just want an outside counsel who specializes in copyright
law; they want outside counsel who specialize in copyright law in
a specific industry and can provide advice based on their work with
dozens of other clients in that industry.
‘THEY HAVE TO KNOW WHAT WE WANT’
But the most knowledgeable attorney simply doesn’t serve a client
well if he or she doesn’t deliver quickly. “The baseline is someone who
can turn around high-quality work in the timeframe you need it in,”
says Dosunmu. “They don’t waste a lot of time chasing false leads,
and appropriately narrow the scope of the project.”
After companies relay their expectations, the burden largely
rests on outside counsel to manage the relationship. In today’s
business environment, “you need a sixth sense about what your
client wants, how they’re going to use the legal advice, and
understanding the broader context in which the legal issues are
being considered,” says Tenenbaum.
“Communication is frequent,” Page says. “They have to know
what we want. Sometimes on the client side it can be difficult, too.
We often know what we want and it may take increased resources
to get there; we want someone to give clarity on that. There are
