Legal Leaders Exchange - Podcast episode 24

From cost center to profit center: Innovative legal strategies

In this special episode recorded at the ELM Amplify 2024 user conference, Jennifer McIver, our Associate Director of Legal Operations and Industry Insights, is joined by Jim Michalowicz, Senior Manager of Legal Operations Business Performance at TE Connectivity. Their discussion offers valuable insights into the intersection of law and business, including how the practical application of business principles can shift the value proposition of the legal department.

Both participants discussed the importance of enhancing productivity and driving growth in legal departments by transforming them from cost centers to profit centers. They highlighted the crucial role of leadership support in fostering innovation and shared strategies to market the legal department through use of productivity-based KPIs, as well as leveraging data to create productivity-based legal fee arrangements.

Topics covered in this episode include:

• The importance enhancing productivity and driving growth in legal departments
• The crucial role of leadership support in fostering innovation
• Strategies for using productivity-based KPIs to both market the legal department and create productivity-based legal billing
• Making significant, impactful changes with a small legal operations team
• Successfully using data analysis to reinforce outside counsel negotiations and improve cost control

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Transcript

Greg Corombos

Hi, I'm Greg Corombos, welcome to Legal Leaders Exchange. This podcast series was created to deliver insights on optimizing legal operations for corporate legal and insurance claims professionals. For today's episode, Jennifer McIver, Associate Director of Legal Operations and Industry Insights at Wolters Kluwer ELM Solutions brings in Jim Michalowicz, Manager of Legal Operations Business Performance at TE Connectivity. The conversation, set during the ELM Amplify 2024 user conference, offers practical insights into how the application of business principles can shift the value proposition of the legal department. They will discuss the evolution of legal departments from reactive to proactive entities, emphasizing how to transform them from cost centers to profit centers. At TE Connectivity, Jim has implemented the Lean Law program, which uses Six Sigma principles to improve efficiency and effectiveness in legal processes. They will also highlight the crucial role of leadership support in fostering innovation and share strategies for marketing the legal department through use of productivity-based KPIs, as well as leveraging data to create productivity-based legal fee arrangements. Let me now welcome Jennifer and Jim.

Jennifer McIver

Thank you, Greg, and I am so excited to be here today, live, San Diego, gorgeous weather outside. We are at ELM Amplify 2024 and I have Jim Michalowicz with me, and we're going to talk a little bit about productivity and some amazing innovations when it comes to legal operations. So before we get going, Jim, I'd love it if you could take a moment introduce yourself and give us a little background on your role.

Jim Michalowicz

Thank you. Yes, thank you for having me and really enjoying this and having this conversation with you. So as far as background, I'm kind of one of those old goats. I don't know if I'm the GOAT, but definitely an old goat, been in the legal operations space for 30 plus years, starting with DuPont in the early 1990s. I was there for 13 years and was part of the DuPont legal model program there. There really wasn't a field of legal operations at that time, so I was very fortunate that for the last three or four jobs, I got to write my own job description. So at Dupont, I called it Legal Services Manager, and a good part of that was litigation management. We did have a somewhat significant litigation portfolio. And then from there, I went to Tyco, and that's not the toy company. Even though I thought that was going to be the toy company, I was really excited about that, but that was actually a company that was having some issues. It was making the news. And I again wrote a job description. It's called Litigation Program Manager, but it was also the Six Sigma Black Belt and head of the continuous improvement program. By the way, at DuPont, I also got the Six Sigma Black Belt at that time. And then from Tyco, I went into the service provider space for some time. So, the flip side. Some will say that's the dark side. And now I am back at TE Connectivity. And the reason I say BACK at TE Connectivity is because TE Connectivity is one of the former Tyco companies. So when it broke up, and I'm now in my 10th year at Tyco and my role is kind of a combination of things, it's Chief Strategy Officer for the law department, head of the continuous improvement program. We also say I'm the head of the sales and marketing for the law department, because I say you market with metrics. And I also sometimes will say, chief therapist, as far as helping folks with their problems, especially when it comes to process management, how to improve speed, etc.

Jennifer McIver

I absolutely love that. And I'm sitting here trying not to laugh over you as you talk, because I used to call myself the chief gap filler. That was my favorite thing, you know, and it sounds like you're definitely not filling gaps. What you're doing is you're creating all new ways of working and all new ways of working within your organization. Those titles are amazing. I mean, Chief Strategy Officer in the legal team, that's impressive.

Jim Michalowicz

Yeah, it's really been a fun ride, and it's built over time with trust, as far as being able to deliver. And it's also trust both ways, because there are things disruptive, there are things that are challenging, there's experimentation, and lots folks don't necessarily like that. That's why you have to have the backing of support from, especially, leadership to do that.

Jennifer McIver

So it sounds, with all the work that you've done and the journey that you've taken, the typical legal department being a reactive legal department is likely not the approach you're going to take. It sounds like you've had enough experience, I would assume, that you're moving a little bit more towards proactive initiatives on the legal team. Is that correct?

Jim Michalowicz

That's fair to say. And I think that goes back to even my time at DuPont, which was really ground-breaking with what the DuPont legal model was built on, which was basically applied business practices to the area of law. And even back then it was, we started what was called a recoveries program. We probably one of the early ones. It’s how to bring back money to the company, so it's not just money going out. Because typically the idea is, well, legal is going to cost you a lot. Okay? It's legal as a cost center, right? Legal as a cost center. So, taking that closer to where we are right now, we kind of advertise or promote that we'd like to become a profit center. In some ways, the way that we measure money in, money out, we're pretty close to being that, as far as our law department. So that's the proactive aspect of what we do.

Jennifer McIver

So you've had some initiatives recently, and proactive approach to litigation and Cost Management. Can you talk about how you got to that point and how you've really been able to articulate your legal department’s or law department’s value with that proposition and initiative?

Jim Michalowicz

Thanks, Jen, this is really important to me. It’s probably the one thing I will preach about when I go to different conferences, is look in the mirror and say, if you're a legal ops person, what do you want to be and what do you want to be known as, as far as a law department. What is your messaging? So when I started back 10 years ago, General Counsel John Jenkins, and I looked at what's our value proposition? And we came up with the following: Enable business growth while protecting revenue and profit margins. It was really interesting because we got hung up on one word in particular, that word protecting. Protecting. And, background, where I came from before we talked about preventive law, preventing bad things from happening. But if you look at that, that sounds like the exact opposite of enabling. So, if we're going to enable business growth, we don't want to be, sort of, the department of no, preventing things. So that's why we went to “protecting”. We've changed one part of the wording of that, and we just updated our strategy map to call it protecting assets instead of revenue, protecting assets. Because safety being such a big issue for a number of companies, as far as safety incidents, etc. So that's how we've moved as far as our value proposition. And once we had that, then we knew how were we going to go ahead and measure ourselves as to how we were fulfilling that value proposition to our internal customers. So as part of our program, which is called Lean Law…

Jennifer McIver

Lean Law?

Jim Michalowicz

Yes, I'm big into coining things, Jen. Just so you know, I love to come up these things.

Jennifer McIver

So “lean”, as in lean ground turkey. Nice one, nice one.

Jim Michalowicz

I think that could have inspired it. But frankly, this one was more to do with lean, as far as business lean, like a Six Sigma business lean approach to this. So we have a program within TE Connectivity, which is called TEOA. It's called the TE Operate Advantage, and that's the kind of program that usually starts on the manufacturing side, process improvement, and then it goes into the functions, and we're one of the functions. And everyone thought, you know, how the heck, in fact, our CEO said at one point, how the heck does Six Sigma, “lean law”, how does that work with lawyers? We showed them. We showed them how it could actually work like this. So anyway, that value proposition led to us coming up with how we set our goals and objectives. We have four value drivers. Those four value drivers are cost to serve, speed, talent development, and also risk balance. And within each of those, we have KPIs, and we also have action plans. And we just finished our goals preparation for fiscal year ‘25 which started earlier this month. And then each of the practice groups, all 13 practice groups, have what's called a PIM score card, which is process improvement management scorecard. But those four value drivers and those KPIs, they each have measurements, which is a really cool thing, because one thing I've learned is competition can sometimes be good.

Jennifer McIver

It absolutely can. I have worked, background for me, I've been working with legal departments. I've been working in the spend and matter management, and the technology side, for the last 12 years. And even taking things a little bit simpler, this is, to me, complex, and I love it. But even taking it back, that when you talk about competition, it used to be from like an invoice approval method. When attorneys are sitting on their invoices, I know clients that would actually put up the naughty list, and it would be a big thing of who's on the naughty list. Who's been on the naughty list the longest? And it really does become a competition to say, No, I'm not going to be on it. I'm actually going to be on the good list, which is, I am maintaining my budget or I'm under budget, right? So putting the good with the naughty was always a fun way to see legal departments.

Jim Michalowicz

It really is. And it's so interesting you bring up the thing about the naughty list, especially when it comes to cost and billing and stuff like this. Even though I said cost to serve as the first value driver, we actually have it down as our third one, because I don't want to put as much focus on that, even though we kind of measure it differently than other companies do. So, the competition, especially about speed: we have targets relative to turnaround time for contracts, internal review, onboarding of suppliers, there's a number of things. Litigation is another one. We do track cycle times. There is a combination. We really have a balanced scorecard. And we also conduct what's called a Business Engagement Survey, which we coined. And now the rest of the functions are using this Business Engagement Survey, which basically polls our internal customers on how we are delivering on the value proposition. How often do you do that? We do it twice a year, but it's very targeted, and so when I say twice a year, one customer will only get it once a year. We divide it up into groups of, let's say, 500 total customers. We’ll get 250 in the first half. Second half will be 250. The reason we break it up is it allows for us to get some of that input from the voice of the customer, voice of the business, and then act on that and then hopefully remedy. And I always say – I do a lot of sports analogies, so bear with me – I say we're usually a very good second half team because we take that input from the voice of the customer, voice the business, act on it, and sure enough, our score always seems to get better that second half.

Jennifer McIver

You go in, you take that initial game plan, you see where maybe you had a few gaps, plug those holes, so that way you're right to go forward. I got it, I like a little football. I love that. I'm curious, though, as I'm sitting here listening to you, this is amazing, and we're gonna continue down the path talking about some of the work that your team is doing. But for those listening, how big is your team? Because this seems pretty involved.

Jim Michalowicz

Yeah, let's kind of break it down to the team. I'm gonna go high end first. So, there's 80,000 employees at TE Connectivity globally, very global company. Law Department, we're 350 which is about half attorneys, half others. I would fall into the others. As far as legal operations, it's really three and a half people, which doesn't seem like a lot, and that's broken down the financials – which I really don't do, even though I'm kind of speaking about financials – I'm doing more of the process improvement, the technology is falling under me as well, And also the cheerleaders, I already said about the sales and marketing person. And then we have another person that's more about the training programs, as far as legal training for both “the others”, as well as the attorneys. It doesn't seem like a lot of people, really, when you think about it.

Jennifer McIver

It doesn't, to be honest. For those that are, obviously, we're listening virtually at this time, Jim and I have the pleasure of being sitting side by side, looking each other, and my mouth dropped open when you said three and a half because I was honestly expecting maybe 10. And to have somebody actually in charge of more of the, you know, reaching out and doing the survey, in charge of the marketing and the raw cheerleading for the marketing of the legal team. Which, by the way, I love marketing of the legal team. I think that is key, because I think so many legal teams are just sitting back. They're known as the black hole, right? And they're the black hole because they're sitting back and being that black hole.

Jim Michalowicz

I really agree with you on that one, Jen. I should say this again. I always like to push the envelope and look at different ways of doing this. We are not a traditional legal ops team, so if you really look at it, and we have 13 practice groups, there is an operational person that may very well be in that group but doesn't really report into legal operations. So one of the things that we also started, I started is something called a lean law coordinator, someone who's a specialist in process improvement. Each of the practice groups has someone who's a lean law coordinator. Could be a paralegal, could be junior counsel. It's not their primary role, but they do act in that capacity. So, one could argue that we've spread this model within so it's not just all centralized in legal operations. And we've planted it in each of the different practice areas. One of the themes at TE is TEOA everywhere. So, we're trying to spread the wealth, spread the fun, spread the games along.

Jennifer McIver

You got me thinking about sports, and I was thinking “Release the Kraken”. Just because I'm from Seattle, we have the hockey team. Let's actually move it back to productivity and cost management. And I know you say you're not the finance person, but obviously vendor management, outside counsel management, and, I think, pricing frameworks come into that. And I think, at least from what I understand, you've developed something a little bit different than just going out there and doing that standard average hourly billable rate.

Jim Michalowicz

Yeah, and maybe I should have kind of smoothed out what I said there about the finance person. One of the questions I know you asked yesterday was, how many people grew up thinking they're gonna be legal ops? One person put their hand up. It wasn't me, just so, you know.

Jennifer McIver

Oh by the way, that person was joking. Nobody grows up to say I'm doing legal ops. Maybe in the future, it could be, though.

Jim Michalowicz

I wanted to be the middle linebacker for the Kansas City Chiefs, so that didn't work out either. But I will say this, I am a numbers person, and that does go to my sports. I'm a stat head in that regard. And how you use numbers as evidence to support whatever it is you're trying to support and make that argument as to why we're doing pretty good, okay? Or maybe we’re not doing so good, so how can we correct? How we take corrective action? So, what we started, and this was about five, six years ago, was a productivity tracker. Now I'm going to give a very short story. Bear with me.

One of the things I did when I was in high school, freshman year at Good Counsel High School in Wheaton, Maryland, outside DC, was I was on the speech and debate team. The topic for that year for the debate was a guaranteed annual income, which sound interesting and novel at the time. And we were given all this evidence again to support either for or against that argument. You could define income however you want to. One of the teams that really had this plan is they defined income as a funeral. Now they won all their debates, because no one had any evidence to argue against providing a funeral. We had all these things based on what we thought income was. What did that teach me? Eventually, we beat them. We beat them in the final. We called them the funeral boys.

What helped me is to say you can define things as you want. We define productivity, maybe a little bit differently than others would define productivity. We actually include the following. One is, yes, it could be cost savings. And also it could include capacity creation. So, in other words, if hours are freed up because you “leaned” them out, then you freed up capacity to do something with that freed capacity. The other thing we put in productivity is where we actually bring money back into the company, or if we reduce the loss of claims against us. Productivity could also be what our IP group does as far as licensing, that's another form of productivity. All these things go into our productivity tracker, and we're able to create our scorecard based on that productivity. So ultimately, we're able to go ahead and publish to the company leadership, and we do have two meetings a year with leadership, and we say, how are we doing? And that productivity tracker kind of shows that. So, other functions have tried to adopt what we've done. But I think we're the only ones that also look at that positive money stream, what's coming back into the company.

Jennifer McIver

Okay, I'm sitting here thinking about it. Can you give me examples of what's coming back into the company? And is that tangible, intangible? Talking about productivity and capacity, is that part of it? A lot of folks want to go this direction, but they don't know how to absolutely define what you're looking at.

Jim Michalowicz

I think what's helpful, again, is what's our value proposition? Enable business growth, protect assets and profit margins. So how do you actually do that if you're a law department like ours, and our IP group is probably our second largest practice group? The license side, I think, is pretty simple. what we're bringing, as far as licensing. The other thing that they do on the cost savings part, and I'll get back into the revenue generation a second, is they do what's called patent pruning.

Jennifer McIver

Patent pruning. So we're going out of sports and we're going into gardening.

Jim Michalowicz

We're going to gardening now. They're saying, well, we’re growing a little bit of weeds around there. Do we kind of prune those back a little bit? So, the patents that don't have as much viability. And what comes out of the law department budget is actually any type of renewals for patents. Those government fees for doing those types of things. They do this analysis with each of the businesses, and they can say that is a true reduction of cost, because that goes against our budget. But here's a couple other examples: a claim against the company, and we negotiate that down. And basically it's either good lawyering, it could be that and very much is. But it also could be, let's look at the contract terms. What was the warranty? What's all the different provisions like this? So, we reduced as far as loss. Those would be claims against the company, but then we have claims also against some of our suppliers. And those would be things where we could be recovering money because we've been the damaged party. There's two different ways. One is if we're the ones that are claimed, have damages, and then we're the claimant as far as damages.

Jennifer McIver

So you're reducing those claims against you, as well as increasing those claims, or at least going out and getting the recovery that you’re entitled to.

Jim Michalowicz

That's right. So, we actually have, for one of our business units, set up a claims team. The other one, which brings money back in the company, is collections. So, yeah, do we have a collections department? Sure, but sometimes they get to the point where they can't get the money. There's bankruptcy issues with some of our suppliers or customers. It's something like that. All those things could fall into, we bring money back into the company. We bring it back the company. Now, some are a little odd and this goes back to my definition about the funerals. We also have a global government affairs and corporate responsibility practice group. They get incentives to build, plan, and bring business to their country. We get incentives, and basically, it's money to us to go ahead and build. And sometimes people don't even recognize that there's value there. So, we really went through each of these. And I think the really important part was it had to pass the smell test. Our CEO, who's a former CFO, boy, he was gonna scrutinize those numbers right and left. But because we have the productivity tracker – and it also includes what is the financial impact and we measure each one of these different things’ financial impact – it passed the smell test. Now he's gotten to the point where he’s like, Oh gosh I gotta I see these numbers again. But nevertheless, he doesn't question the numbers themselves.

Jennifer McIver

That's great. So we might have gotten a little bit in the weeds, you know, a little garden, little pruning. We're definitely not six feet under yet, though. So we're good on the funeral side, if we can take it back, though, because I did definitely want to talk about the billing methods. Because I know for those listening, a lot of this is going to be amazing ideas, different ways to really strike that visibility with our organization, maybe even tie in some of the goals with the organization's goals because it sounds like you're definitely in that realm. But if we take it that step back, a lot are still just focusing on: right now rates are on the rise, they’re continuously on the rise. They're managing their outside counsel, and they're looking for new ways to do it, or alternative ways, or different ways to balance the conversation. Can we talk a little bit more about that?

Jim Michalowicz

Sure can. Looking at billing data has been kind of a hobby of mine for a long time. When I was at DuPont, we were the second user of time metrics. I think the Hartford was the first one. And it was interesting, because once we had the task codes in place, then we started seeing what the data was telling us. We learned that our law firms spent a lot of money on “discovery, other”, which helped us tremendously.

Jennifer McIver

Discovery, other. I love the “other”.

Jim Michalowicz

And then there was actually a task code that was called “other, other”, which, yeah. How helpful was this? So, let's kind of speed up to where we are now. One of the efforts that we did a couple years ago, given what I told you before about the patent portfolio being probably one of our biggest… I should also say that our outside spend is probably 35% of our total spend. We're different because we're not a heavy litigation portfolio, so it's a little bit different the way you do this. So, what I'm saying now may not resonate with some folks, but for those that do have an IP portfolio, I think this would. We looked at the UTBMS codes for IP, and decided, you know what? We just need, like six or seven of those. We don't need all of them. And we particularly want to focus on two forms of patent filings. We had our firms starting to use those, we did sore thumb analysis, what I call it, which is to say, for these type of patents within this country, what's the variation? $2,000 up to $20,000. Sore thumb would say, well, $20,000 probably, what should the number be? And now, through kind of smoothing out the data, we've decided to identified targets. What's the price? So we come up with the price chart. We basically said, a patent filing of this sort within this country? Here's what the number is.

Jennifer McIver

And that was all because you took a look at the work that was important, the work that you had more of. So you know more of that spend. And you almost went backwards when it comes to data. Instead of having more and more and more categories, you really brought those back into the meaningful categories. And by the way, when you said “other, other”, all I could think about was “E124 other” on the UTBMS, expense codes. I mean, that is just ingrained, right? Turn that off, reject that invoice. As you're talking, that's all I can think of is E124.

Jim Michalowicz

Absolutely. By doing this, it brought three different benefits. One was, we talked about the competition. Now we knew how to measure firms and if they wanted to get our business in these countries, these types of filings, here's what the going rate is. So it's a productivity – that goes back to that word again – it's a productivity-based fee. This is how much time it should take, and effort, to complete this. Here's what the dollar amount is. The other thing that it helps with is it reduces our need to focus on manual bill review. And I'm saying manual bill review, even if it's an e-invoice, I understand, because I just feel like there's needless time spent to try to figure out, did this firm do the right thing for you? And I just think, why do that? I mean, if this is what we're paying, this is the price. Let's do it. That goes to the point now where we're at, which is, again, a goal that we've set is to have 75% to 80% of our billing be productivity-based fee arrangements. I'm not saying AFAS, because that's a much larger expanse, but I'm going to say productivity-based. It's measurable. We've done that with some litigations, some investigations, some of our corporate work is based on a kind of fixed fee as to, here's what the value of the work is, and do it that way.

So I'm trying to, frankly, I know this will go against maybe some of what the value proposition is for TyMetrix and T360. I'm trying to eliminate the need to do a lot of the back work, which is to review the invoices, use that data, move it up front, and to say, this is what the price is to do business for these things. And I got a lot of pushback on this from a lot of people, because I brought up in one meeting, I said, what can't be unit price? What can't be priced that a law firm is providing service? Oh, wow. That's what the medical profession went to and that was disaster. I said, no, no. I just asked the question, what can't be unit price? So, I think, be it depositions… We already know that eDiscovery cost per page, cost per gigabyte, so that's all been priced out that way. I think a lot of these little services can be done as well. It doesn't take the special sauce away from what legal counsel does. But there's a lot of these things, task activities, that can be priced this way.

Jennifer McIver

I love it. And just as some takeaways today, what you've done is definitely… some other teams have done similar work, not many. And I think a lot of it is because there is that thought that the law firms, you can't do business that way with law firms. They set the rates. And then there's the other aspect of attorney autonomy, right? We have to select our law firms, they're going to tell us the rates. I'm not comfortable saying this is their range. So how have you worked through that? And did you find that pushback? And where did you go with the pushback?

Jim Michalowicz

Yeah, so COVID has me mixed up as far as years, but let's just say four or five years ago, when the great resignation was happening, and now there's this competition for resources and law firms law departments were kind of competing for talent and jacked up all the numbers so we're seeing associates getting these crazy salaries like this. And we knew it hit the rates, and then the rates started to come like this. First, I was aghast, like many others, but I said, that's not the argument to be made. It's not about the rates. Rates is just part of that calculation. It's the effort. Who is being assigned, so when you're doing budgeting, what staffing at what staffing level, and then what rate associated? Do we negotiate? Do we get discounted rates? Sure, but for me, that's just part of it. And I think too much focus has been on the rate itself and not on the effort, which is a key part, as far as the staffing. We've really requested what I call strategic budgets. They're kind of task code phase-based to say, who are you going to assign to these matters? And it's kind of a forecast as far as moving forward. So we took a different angle. Yeah, we were upset, like many others, when those rate increases came like this. We did do some negotiations. Some we said, hey, we're just not gonna pay that rate. But we looked at it a little bit differently as far as how to attack it.

Jennifer McIver

if there was someone listening that really wanted to start thinking about productivity, invoicing, or rates, billing, and they're using a system, they're using T360, they're using Passport, how would you suggest that they start? Is it just, is it data, data, data? And what did you look at for them?

Jim Michalowicz

You just laid it out perfectly. And now, with the introduction of more AI, GenAI – it should be called JenAI, as in you.

Jennifer McIver

I love it!

Jim Michalowicz

But now there's this great opportunity to kind of dissect this and diagnose it and define it. Oh, three D’s there. So it’s really being able to say, and because of recurring activities, it's not like these are, oh my gosh, a whole new event. There's history on our side there. One of the things that’s reflected back a little bit for those who are in litigation, you can use this data. It can be billing data along with the outcome data. What happened with all these different cases, I think, especially with slip and fall cases, Labor Employment cases, you can say this is a $10,000 case. Why go forward? If you know it's in this jurisdiction from this judge. Here's the plaintiff's counsel, here's what it's going to be, and why spend all this money to go ahead and try to argue against that if you already know? So this is where I think the data, T360 data, along with, I'll call it outcome data, is so key is to try to determine it. This goes back to what Raja was talking about the other day, predictive. How can you make this more predictive?

Jennifer McIver

And we have the data you just have to start small. I loved your use of IP, starting small, grabbing that, the work that you're doing, where your spend is centered, pulling down the data points. Because a lot of people, I think, get overwhelmed with the data points, and then that makes it really difficult to review. How did your attorneys take this? Whether it's the IP or other areas that you're doing more of the productivity billing – you have quite a few attorneys on the team – how did they take that roll out?

Jim Michalowicz

Yeah, let's start with the IP team. Rosa Kim is our chief IP counsel. She was really receptive to this because every invoice from our IP firms had to go through her. So again, this goes back to that therapy. My role as therapist, she goes, Jim, I don't want to reveal these invoices. And these are a couple thousand here, a couple thousand there, I don't need to review all these invoices. We already had a cheerleader, she was like bring it on. And I have found that with any of these different things, I'll call disruptive, be it a service, a process change, a technology, go with the person that's feeling the pain right now. Ease my pain like that. Then you build up momentum. Get a few wins as far as doing that, and then the others will come, because that goes back to what? The competition. Now all of a sudden, Rose is getting recognized for being a leader as far as cost management. Hey, I can do that too! I can say that we are the company that’s willing to always change. There's change management practices I put in there. But it will go ahead and I think we'll all ease up as long as people see the value of these different type of changes. It’s what's good for them.

Jennifer McIver

I think you've provided amazing tips, and we've had a little fun here, too. I really enjoy putting in some humor, and I appreciate you taking the time. If there was one thing that you would say to those that are looking to change how their legal department is viewed within their organization, what would that be as a closing remark, Jim?

Jim Michalowicz

Start like we did, look at what your value proposition is. It all starts there, and what do you want to be known as? And then build from there as to how you can deliver on that value proposition and how you can measure it and how you can market it.

Jennifer McIver

I love it. Thank you so much for taking the time. We're inside instead of outside, so hopefully you can enjoy the weather here in sunny San Diego. And I'm looking forward to future conversations with you, Jim, this has been great.

Jim Michalowicz

Great. Thank you so much, Jen.

Greg Corombos

Those were the words of Jennifer McIver and Jim Michalowicz. This podcast is hosted by Wolters Kluwer ELM Solutions, the market leading provider of enterprise legal spend and matter management, contract life cycle management, and legal analytics solutions. For more information and additional guidance, please visit wolterskluwer.com or call 713-572-3282. Please join us for future podcasts on optimizing legal operations and achieving your legal and business goals.