Our law department uses value-based fee arrangements in both the transactional and litigation contexts. More
specifically:
§;Capped fees – used more in the litigation context
§;Portfolio retainers – used more in the litigation context, an entire body of work is handled on a retainer
basis (e.g., all class actions or all derivative document work or all of ‘x’ in a year is handled for a set sum);
volume and retainer amounts are determined by looking at prior history of spend and workload data
§;Flat fees – for a specific task or phase or segment of work (used both in the transaction and litigation
contexts)
§;Fixed fees – when the entirety of the work is handled for a set sum (used both in the transaction and
litigation contexts)
OTHER VALUE PRACTICES IMPLEMENTED BY THE LAW DEPARTMENT
§;Secondments – use to cover staffing gaps and for special project work; have used secondments for a
range of staffing levels, including paralegals and experienced lawyers; offers great exposure to the law
department and company’s business processes
§;Centralized ediscovery in-house: “evidence lab” – the law department has created an evidence lab; the
lab reports through the litigation practice group and includes skilled professionals in technology and
ediscovery (collection, initial processing and review); the law department works with legal service vendors
to host the data and make it available to outside counsel; use of contract vendors is encouraged to provide
domestic, second-pass review services
§;Off-shore document review – the law department sourced and developed cost management practices
around anything collateral to the delivery of legal services, and has a relationship with several vendors
off-shore to provide document review services; in addition, the off-shore providers are reviewing some
contracts and handling some contract negotiations; providers are located in India and the Philippines
§;External legal project managers – the law department uses project managers from contract vendors to
help provide sleek, efficient management of the discovery process and to help ensure smooth prioritization
of review, and that the work gets done in the right order by the right resources without redundancies;
project managers are independent of the law firms working on matters and report to JPMorgan Chase
§;Commoditization – for larger matters, a fixed fee per document approach for second-pass document
review by outside counsel; establishing fixed low rates for second-pass review by outside counsel and for
file management work by paralegals
ESTIMATED COST SAVINGS
We estimate savings of 10 percent of domestic spend from implementation of the above practices (primarily from
centralized ediscovery and use of managed review vendors).
MOST VALUABLE PRACTICES; PROVIDED GREATEST RESULTS
Practices that have provided the greatest results include flat fee and fixed fee arrangements, and centralized
ediscovery and managed review vendors.
