October 2013

Lynn Kappelman, Seyfarth Shaw LLPKatherine Perrelli, Seyfarth Shaw LLP

[client or consultant]

Competitive CollaborationHow to Create Your Own Legal All-Star Team

Today

We will:

• help you think both creatively and practically on how to generate greater value and success with your legal provider relationships;

• explain how you can eliminate traditional competitive boundaries across your law firms and other service providers to form specialized, high-performance work teams;

• share some examples of success;

• help you learn collaboratively today with your peers.2 |

What is Competitive Collaboration?

• We are starting to see it everywhere:

– One retailer collaborates with another to give out coupons or gift certificates and drive more customers into both;

– One doctor collaborates with another to provide high quality specialized care in a specialty area or jurisdiction where only one is licensed;

– One contractor works with another to bid on a job that is too large or too complex for either of them to service.

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How Can In-house Lawyers Use Competitive Collaboration To Their Benefit?

• Create a ‘virtual law team’ designed to deliver results for you in a way no single provider could;

• Bring together in-house staff, outside counsel, and/or related service providers;• Choose the team members who have tailored skill sets for a given case, transaction

or portfolio;• Devise knowledgeable team which is dedicated to company’s business and its

processes and effectively co-manages cases/transactions;

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• Ensure that team is willing to share skills and information and partner with traditional competitors as teammates

Why pursue competitive collaboration?

• Ensures greater value from service providers;– Cost-efficiency, reduced litigation docket, shorter cycle times– Improved risk mitigation, overall service quality and consistency across your

service provider team• Encourages creative thinking, innovative solutions, shared learning;• Elevates role of in-house counsel from gatekeeper to leader-strategist;• Creates stronger cohesive relationships among service providers for

you, your team, your company;• Just possibly, delivers more fun and fulfillment for everyone involved.

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Stages of competitive collaboration

Reactive Pro-active Way of Life

• Management in the moment

• Situationally driven• Most likely matter-

centric• Ad hoc team – playing

the hand you’re dealt• Little or no team

infrastructure eg, communications platforms, tools, common best practices

• Planned and deliberate effort to design and lead team

• Can be matter, transaction or portfolio-centric

• Creates or utilizes some degree of team processes and infrastructure (e.g. online collaborative platforms)

• Organizational, institutionalized way of working:

DuPont Legal ModelPfizer AllianceFMC ACES Model

• Preferred Law Firm structure

• Predefined agreements• Well-established

infrastructure and processes

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Real-life success stories involving Seyfarth

• Multi-plaintiff trials for two different large corporations in Texas and West Virginia

• Managing a ‘virtual law team’ of independent, regional and national lawyers on a portfolio of hundreds of IT procurement contracts (Transaction Solutions Center)

• Leading a national team of right-priced legal providers to deliver a comprehensive solution for an ERISA litigation portfolio on behalf of a leading insurer

• Partnering with a global law firm (U.K.-based) to help their clients with U.S. law, including M&A issues, wage-and-hour, executive comp, environmental and more 7 |

How Would You Design This Collaboration? Team? Tools?

• You are the head of litigation of an east coast retailer and you have a class action consumer fraud case pending in state court in West Virginia. The Plaintiffs’ attorney is a well-respected class action litigator who has a good relationship with the local clerks and the Judges, and a successful track record on these class action cases. Your Boston firm does not have a West Virginia office and word on the street is that it is a very parochial jurisdiction. What are some reasons you might want different law firms to collaborate in representing you? What are the challenges and how might you facilitate this? How would you approach a collaboration of competitors? 8 |

Keys to leading a successful collaboration

• Carefully select your team members—by skill and personality;

• Set up regular team meetings to ensure unified strategy and collaborative planning--process mapping;

• Employ technology and other tools that make communication and information sharing easy;

• Regularly review and agree on allocation of responsibilities and evaluate efficiencies;

• Create rewards systems for collaboration;

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Challenges to navigate

• Team members who refuse to communicate or align on client goals, group objectives-my way or the highway approach;

• Team members who resist sharing intellectual capital, or vie for client attention and approval;

• Inter-firm and/or interpersonal competition-backstabbing;

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Challenges to navigate

• Incompatible technology between service providers;

• Failure to align best practices to ensure efficient work;

• Client conflicts; and• Attorney-Client Privilege and Confidentiality –

Team Access11 |

How to Pick Your Team of Collaborators

• Legal excellence – think about:– context– substantive law– technical expertise

• Seek diversity of backgrounds and perspectives– Consider resources who are not lawyers, such as technology, communications and

project management professionals• Seek natural team players – no Lone Rangers• Find those who are facile and adept at using technology, can actively use

technology tools• Look for strong communicators and networkers – they tend to know how to

share information 12 |

Collaboration planning• Outside counsel paralegals• Outside counsel associates• Outside counsel partners• Outside counsel staff (non-billable)• Contract attorneys• Graduate business school students• Law school students• Paralegal program students• Retired lawyers (in-house, law firm)• Retired businesspersons• In-house teams from other depts.• Multiple law firms • Outsourcing to non-law firm vendors• Offshoring • Accounting firms • Consulting firms• Temporary staffing agencies• Investment bankers• Freelancers knowledgeable about your

industry• Public/investor relations consultants

Alignment on expectations, success

Resources

Communications

who? needs to learn what? when? from whom?

Collaboration planning: Process mapping

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• Provide visual, step-by-step diagram of process or workflow• Understand existing process -- benchmark• Determine non-value add steps• Analyze opportunities, select improvements • Develop controls to ensure quality, consistency of process improvement• Create knowledge management opportunities

Additional tools to consider

• Project management tools– Scoping document/charter– Project plan/budget– Cadence meetings and communications strategies– RACI – Accountability

• Online collaboration tools– Collaboration platforms e.g. SeyfarthLink– Mobile technology applications 15 |

Ongoing leadership and management

What can you do as the client to facilitate the collaboration among competitors?

• Remove barriers and communicate strong client relationship with all members of the team;

• Reward clear, candid, consistent communications with client and among team members;

• Build trust and require trust between and among team members.

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Reward systems

• Fee structures—Well defined success fees• Incentives and bonuses for collaboration and

efficiency• Non-financial recognition

– Award for excellence across provider network• References and cross-referrals

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13 Behaviors of High Trust

1. Talk Straight2. Demonstrate Respect3. Create Transparency4. Right Wrongs5. Show Loyalty6. Deliver Results7. Get Better

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8. Confront Reality9. Clarify Expectations10. Practice Accountability11. Listen First12. Keep Commitments13. Extend Trust

Source: Steven Covey, The Speed of Trust

Questions?

• Lynn Kappelman: lkappelman@seyfarth.com►Seyfarth Shaw LLP (Boston)

• Katherine (Kate) Perrelli: kperrelli@seyfarth.com►Seyfarth Shaw LLP (Boston)

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October 2013

Lynn Kappelman, Seyfarth Shaw LLPKatherine Perrelli, Seyfarth Shaw LLP

[client or consultant]

Competitive CollaborationHow to Create Your Own Legal All-Star Team

How Would You Design This Collaboration? Team? Tools?

• You are the lead Intellectual Property attorney for a large big box retailer and you have a portfolio of licensing agreements which you need to negotiate and manage. Your go to outside counsel firm who handles IP litigation does not have the bandwidth to manage the licensing aspect and they do not offer flat fees or project management. What are some reasons you might want different law firms to collaborate in representing you? What are the challenges and how might you facilitate this?

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How Would You Design This Collaboration? Team? Tools?

• You are the head of employment litigation at a regional retailer and you are concerned that some of your employees are misclassified as exempt. Your boutique law firm has worked with you on employment litigation for years but does not have a team who does wage and hour counseling and audits. What are some reasons you might want different law firms to collaborate in representing you? What are the challenges and how might you facilitate this?

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How Would You Design This Collaboration? Team? Tools?

• You are the General Counsel of a global big box retailer and you plan to open twenty new stores. Six of the new stores will be in California where you have not had a presence yet, seven of the new stores are in Germany and seven of them are in Canada. You have a law firm which negotiates all of your leases but they do not have a California presence or any attorneys in Canada or Germany. What are some reasons you might want different law firms to collaborate in representing you? What are the challenges and how might you facilitate this?

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