Partnering: The Future of Legal Services Has Arrived

Over 10 years ago, E.I. du Pont de Nemours and Company adopted a model for the procurement of legal services that is based on strict legal spending rules, including early case assessment measures, consolidation of law firms and service providers handling DuPont work, and implementation of numerous other cost-saving measures. The DuPont model, which is commonly referred to as "partnering," has become a platform for the efforts of an increasing number of companies to revamp their legal service expectations and implement changes that embrace partnering between in-house and outside attorneys. Despite the amount of time that partnering has survived and the increasing number of companies adopting a partnering model, most outside counsel still meet the concept of partnering with great skepticism. This skepticism is bred from both an inability to envision the future of the legal services market and the misconception that the sole goal of partnering is to reduce legal bills for corporations at the expense of law firm revenues.