Your company has decided to self-insure for workers’ compensation and third-party liability exposures. The primary drivers of this decision are to reduce cost and to have greater control over how claims are handled. But to accomplish these goals, you need to engage in legal spend management.
An element of legal spend management is the practice of evaluating the law firms you engage with, using structured data captured from a legal ebilling system, supplemented by claims information. The evaluation will tell you if you are getting the results you expect at the price you want to pay.
With a strong legal spend management program in place, you can readily gauge the performance of your law firms to see who of your panel counsel supports your own claim management goals through efficient, compliant, and effective representation. In the absence of a formalized program, you are undercutting both the cost savings and the claims control you set out to achieve.
To gain the most value for your legal spend and maintain control over how claims are addressed, there are three critical questions you need to ask of your law firms on a consistent basis.
