Two secondment tips: build them into competitive bids and scale them to fees paid

From an onging discussion on LinkedIin about secondments, I extracted two ideas offered by in-house attorneys. I added the bold font to highlight the comments:

“I think the only way to begin to secure a free secondee is when you are having a major overhaul of your external providers. Depending on your annual external spend, if you make it clear that you are only going to award work to sufficient firms to ensure they are likely to get at least between £500k and £1M a year there should be enough of an incentive to ask them to include a newly qualified to 2 year pqe [[post-qualification experience], for at least six months a year, as part of their bid submission.”

Another lawyer, also from the UK, added the idea of tiering secondments to fees paid. “We have a standard panel of law firms that goes out for renewal every 2 years. As part of the pricing structure, firms are required to provide a free secondee per a certain amount of legal spend. … Some firms have reached out and offered an hour a week of free advice to help maintain relationships while legal spend decreases overall.”

For more on secondments and legal departments (See my post of July 17, 2008: secondment with 12 references; and Jan. 23, 2008: secondments with 8 references.).