Budget Cut Rescue Plan: What to Do to Protect Your In-House Talent

Nearly all (96%) of GCs faced budget cuts last year — at least according to Axiom’s?latest report, which queried 300 GCs on how resource constraints are impacting how they deliver services to the business.

Half of the respondents were enterprise teams.

Maybe you’re one of them? ??

I wasn’t surprised by either one of the report's findings.

?? The teams with the biggest budget cuts turned to outside counsel more frequently to handle their matters.

?? Of those teams that shipped at least 25% of their work to firms, those same teams report (on average) that?over half of that work?could have been kept in-house if they were properly resourced.

Here’s why that matters.

Nearly every single in-house team is facing budget cuts — an average of 11% according to Axiom’s report.

This "do-more-with-less" environment has been with us for some time now, and is unlikely to go away.

As a result, most in-house teams are reverting to slashing their headcount and shipping 30%+ of their matters to outside counsel (for many of our clients, that number is much higher).

And probably overpaying that outside counsel a sum that would easily make up the salary of the in-house attorneys that they were just forced to cut loose. ??

Now imagine an alternate reality, where in-house attorneys are empowered to control legal spend and source their outside counsel with a new level of transparency and cost predictability. ????

Like happened just recently with a brand new member on one of our clients’ litigation teams.

He sourced 6 different matters to outside counsel using PERSUIT in just his first few months on the job.

For one matter alone, he achieved over $1.2M in cost savings. ??

And he did it on his own, with no training or support from our customer success team (although most of our clients will tell you that we’re really really good at this part).

Now multiply that solo effort of one attorney achieving $1.2 million in savings across dozens of your in-house attorneys and hundreds of your matters.

$1.2M x 100s of matters = ??????

I can’t imagine a better way to meet budget-cut mandates, justify your headcount, and help your team do more with less (by partnering more effectively with your firms).

As a proud startup “dad,” it’s kind of hard for me to not be biased at how strongly our solution — PERSUIT? — is positioned to solve some of these many headwinds that GCs are facing.

But I’ll take a risk at showing my bias.

Because today’s budget cuts are real for in-house teams.

And as one of our clients recently told us.

“If we didn’t have PERSUIT, we’d be laying off more people.”

GCs, what's?your?cost containment strategy when finance comes for your headcount?

I'm Jim Delkousis. Founder & CEO of PERSUIT? | Recovered BigLaw Partner | Helping Transform How Enterprise Buys Legal

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