In the challenging the legal services delivery market where we are all being asked to do more with less, legal operations professionals and legal teams they serve benefit greatly from having outside counsel billing guidelines to support their firm relationships as well as panel convergence, e-billing platform optimization and budgeting efforts.

In the unfortunate event parties are in a dispute, settlement agreements wrap up resolution and obviate the need to proceed to litigation, which may not be in the interest of both parties. Because the ground floor of the negotiation is contentious to begin with, key focus on both sides should be narrowly tailored to swiftly resolve the claim.