Vendor Management
How to get the most out of vendor
relationships.
By JP Kubicki
March/April 2005 Issue
The chief responsibility of any legal
assistant is to get the job done, period. Many times, the task at hand
requires resources not found in the legal assistant’s office or firm,
and a third party is needed to help bring all the pieces together in
time to meet a looming deadline. It’s times like these paralegals must
remember they have the key to their own success — the vendor.
Sales people, recruiters, consultants
and vendors often are vastly underused resources for legal assistants.
There are scores of sales professionals offering services, and it can be
amazing what they can and will do for a new or busy client. Unable to
see past the sales pitch, many paralegals let the opportunity to use the
resources and talents of these vendors slip by. At some point, most
legal assistants will need a vendor for services, and every paralegal
has an approach to dealing with the sales industry. Some choose to
ignore vendors, never returning a call. Others choose to interact with
sales people in a way that benefits their law firms. These paralegals
know how to get what they need and use vendors as tools for success.
Types of
Vendors
The number and variety of companies serving the legal
community obviously differs from city to city. Generally, there are at
least three different types of vendors with variations on them all:
-
copy vendors specializing in providing
paper and electronic copy services;
-
staffing agencies providing either
permanent or temporary (often both) staffing solutions ranging from
secretary to partner placement; and
-
litigation technology/support and
discovery management companies that focus on providing legal
assistants with the tools to bring large amounts of data and paper
into a more practical and ultimately a more usable design to use at
trial.
Other types of vendors include
transcription services, translation services, research companies, office
product providers and so forth. Needless to say, a paralegal typically
has a multitude of vendors to choose from for various legal-specific
needs.
Do Your
Homework
Depending on where you work and the reputation of the firm,
gaining access to vendors can be as easy as answering your phone or as
difficult as trying to find a company specializing in a specific service
not offered by anyone in your market. “Being at a big firm, [vendors]
find you. When I was at a smaller firm in a small city, it was tough to
get a vendor to call me back. My firm was not a big user and didn’t have
hundreds of attorneys. For them, I was not a hot prospect,” said Lindiwe
Tshuma, case manager for Crowell & Moring in Washington, D.C.
If you work at a firm where vendors are
constantly calling, try to turn their calls into research for your
future vendor needs. Instead of rushing to get off the phone, try to
listen beyond the sales pitch. By slowing down and taking a few minutes
to engage in a discussion, you can yield real benefits for yourself and
the vendor.
“I can’t stand to waste time,” said
Melissa O’Brien, litigation paralegal manager for Ropes & Gray in
Boston, Washington, D.C., and New York. “I will, however, take the calls
and hear them out. When they send me their information, I keep it with
all the other vendor materials in an organized file.”
By taking the call and listening,
O’Brien said she learns who the person is, who they work for, what they
do and what they are willing to do for her firm. Based on this
information, she decides whether to take the next step and follow up
with them in the future. “Setting up a time to meet and chat on the
first couple calls is pointless,” she said. “It’s not until I actually
think they can offer us something of value and that I might have a need
that I take time out to sit and talk with them.”
If you are in need of a service and
don’t know who to call, the best place to start is the Internet and
online phone books. Legal journals and periodicals also identify a great
number of service providers. Message boards, blogs and other online
services are rapidly becoming instrumental tools in the Digital Age. In
these forums (such as the LAT-Forum at
www.legalassistanttoday.com/lat-forum), paralegals can find others
in similar situations, positions, markets and practice groups who might
be able to lend some advice or offer a tip almost instantly. By
exploring these tools, legal assistants quickly can expand their group
of peers and network of contacts — both invaluable resources.
You might find valuable leads by asking
about other services the vendors you already use have to offer. “I ask
my vendors to remind me of their other services, ones I might not
typically use,” said Susan Style, paralegal manager for the Minneapolis
office of Robins, Kaplan, Miller & Ciresi. “If they can’t offer me the
service themselves, many times they will suggest someone to me.” Vendors
want their clients to be satisfied and view them as a resource. This
extends to providing helpful referrals when necessary.
When your firm is seeking a vendor for
specific services, first ask the vendor for a list of client referrals
you can contact to find out what other firms have used their services,
in what capacity, and what the firms’ satisfaction level was with the
vendor. This type of research answers necessary questions about that
vendor’s performance and product, such as: Do they make deadlines? Is
this vendor easy to work with? What types of work has this company done
in the past?
While this type of research can be
useful, be mindful not to place too much emphasis on it. It should be
used broadly to get a feel for a particular company and a particular
vendor’s exposure in the field and community. It should not be used to
rule out a particular company or sales person because of one person’s
good or bad experience. Every situation is different, and you need to
evaluate the information you have gathered and apply it to your own
circumstances and needs.
The
Vendor-Client Relationship
Once you have narrowed down possible vendors you might be
interested in using for a particular service, it’s time to sit down with
the company’s representatives for a one-on-one interview. At this point,
your instincts should give you a sense of whether the vendor is selling
you a line or is sincere and can back up what they say they can offer
your firm. Ask simple questions, such as: “How do I know this is true?”
or “Who else have you done this for, and may I call them?” Like any good
interviewer, take notes and follow up with other firms who have used
their services to make sure the information the vendor provided during
your interview is true.
“Going through the fact finding process
is what helps define a successful relationship,” said Phil Leon,
director of Business Development for Merrill Corporation in Washington,
D.C. “Trust needs to be established for your relationship to work, and
you can get there many ways, but the only tool you need is dialogue
between the vendor and their client.” Leon, who has more than 20 years
of experience in the legal services industry, said those vendors not
interested in talking and listening, but rather selling, are not worth
your time. You want to work with a vendor genuinely interested in
understanding your needs. Once you find a vendor with these qualities,
take the time to communicate your needs and expectations and how the
vendor can address them.
Along these same lines, paralegals and
firms must provide vendors sufficient information to get the job done
adequately. “Good clients share information with their service provider
because they understand how this will benefit them,” Leon said.
O’Brien agreed, adding that you need to
talk about your baseline expectations and provide insight into the firm
culture and your work process. This type of dialogue is invaluable to
establishing the good working relationship between you and the vendor.
Like your work group and peers in your office, vendors are part of your
team. Moreover, if a legal assistant provides honest details, from
establishing true, accurate deadlines where possible, to giving precise
detail as to what the finished product or solution will look like,
vendors can assess whether they can help and under what terms.
Don’t be afraid to ask what you are
getting for your money, and how the price was calculated. Also, remember
a vendor is in the business to make a living, so part of that price is
the vendor’s compensation and the company’s profit. You have to
determine if the price is a number you can live with. If not, work with
the vendor until you can find a solution that is satisfactory for both
sides.
Finally, as the person ultimately
responsible for getting the job done, you will need to know if there are
any weaknesses in the vendor’s process. Ask vendors direct questions
about any limitation or weaknesses in their service. This will save you
and the firm many headaches.
“The best things I can hear from a
vendor are the words ‘I can, I can’t, I will try and I will find out,’”
said Tshuma. “I don’t expect the sales people I work with to give me the
answers to all my problems; rather, I want them to help me where they
can and provide ideas on where to go if they can’t.” Over-promising and
under-delivering is common in the legal services business, and a
paralegal can’t afford to waste time and resources on a vendor unwilling
to be completely honest about possible problems or limitations.
Using a Request
for Proposal
Some law firms, and to a larger extent corporations and
government agencies, employ the use of Requests for Proposals to solicit
bids from vendors. These RFPs typically are a standard form to which the
legal assistant simply has to “plug in” the specifics of the project for
which they are seeking service.
Typically, the type of information
needed for an effective RFP is a detailed description of the service
needed, time the RFP is open, deadline for performing the service or
term of contract, location where the service is to be performed or
product delivered, a short description of issuing entity (law firm,
corporation, etc.), specific requirements and qualifications, and how to
submit the bid. Some RFPs will include an explanation of how the winning
bid will be decided.
With RFPs, there often is a trade-off
between price and service. Generally, the winning RFP will be decided
almost exclusively on price. If a legal assistant uses the RFP process,
he or she must understand the service associated with an RFP arrangement
can be lacking service they would receive from a vendor otherwise. This
might be because the RFP de-personalizes the buying process, making it
more challenging to forge a relationship. “Often you can reach a better
and more flexible agreement through a handshake deal rather than being
locked into the terms of some stiff contract,” O’Brien said. “RFPs are
really only best used when exclusivity is the goal and not simply trying
to find a vendor to do a service.”
Often firms require RFPs. However, if
you want to avoid an RFP, there are some options. RFPs by their nature
take time, and with tight deadlines, there might be no time to draft,
mail and review responses to an RFP. As the legal assistant, you can
stress the loss of time associated with the RFP to a supervisor. When
time is of the essence, the supervisor who also shares responsibility
for the project might make an exception.
Another tactic is to let your supervisor
know about the strong relationship already established with a vendor and
how well the vendor has served you in the past. Another approach is to
assert yourself and fortify your position by suggesting that since the
matter is your responsibility, you should decide how best to achieve the
result. Based on tenure, reputation and politics, some legal assistants
might find this tactic useful, while others might feel it to be futile.
If an RFP is unavoidable, there are
strategies to make it more effective:
-
Write the RFP carefully and
thoughtfully, making sure to use specific language providing all the
necessary details.
-
Make sure the vendors know about the
RFP, as many times an RFP is simply published on the Web or in an
e-mail with no notice to vendors. If vendors are unaware of the RFP,
they can’t respond.
-
Talk to the vendors and help them better
understand the details. “The more information the better, so it’s
best to keep communication open and urge your vendor to ask
questions. Good vendors will provide the client with real solutions
after digging deep for facts,” Leon said. The bounds of ethics ought
to be observed, however, when discussing the RFP with any vendor as
they often are used to level the playing field and negate bias or
favoritism, especially when used by government agencies and
corporations.
Vendors as
Experts
Many legal assistants fail to recognize that as much
experience as they might have, vendors often have more experience and
knowledge in their specific specialized areas. Vendors’ knowledge can be
invaluable. Vendors deal on a daily basis with situations some legal
assistants only encounter once a week, a month or a year.
Either out of fear, ego, lack of time or
ignorance, many paralegals don’t get their vendors involved earlier in
the process. “The vendors I use have the keen sense they are here to
provide the firm a service, just as I am. I treat them as though they
are part of my team, and therefore, I will call them as soon as I can to
get them into the process,” Tshuma said. “So many legal assistants think
the vendors work for them and forget that both the legal assistant and
the vendor work for the firm’s client.”
A vendor is a tool that can be used to
get the job done properly. Don’t be afraid to ask for a vendor’s opinion
or seek consultation on a matter. “True clients use me and call me early
in the process to seek out my thoughts,” said Clint McDonnell, regional
vice president-West for Ajilon Legal Staffing. By being patient and
honest, you will help yourself find a solution much quicker and more
easily than if you forge ahead alone.
“You need someone to vent your thoughts
to because you are operating under stress,” Tshuma said. In the end,
however, it will fall on the legal assistant to make the decision on how
to proceed. “I want as much confidence as I can when I make the call,
and I will do whatever I can before that to make sure I have the best
possible data,” she said.
Dealing with
Problems
It’s the nature of a paralegal’s work to be complicated,
detailed, time-sensitive and ever-changing. The one certainty is that
problems will arise. “If a vendor fails, it’s viewed as though the legal
assistant in charge failed,” Tshuma said.
Legal assistants are the buffer between
disaster and delivery and need to understand how to operate within that
role. When a vendor doesn’t deliver what they were hired to do, you need
to act swiftly and immediately to correct the situation. The thing to
remember is it’s not about assigning fault but about fixing the problem
and moving forward.
When a problem arises, first you should
assess the damage or level of failure. If the problem can be fixed
easily with some extra help, be prepared to ask your peers and the
vendor to pitch in. If the problem is larger and more complex, the team
will have to salvage any work they can and restart the process. The
vendor’s role in this situation is to accommodate the additional work
and be readily available to the legal assistant.
If you are faced with a nonresponsive
vendor when things go haywire, you can always call another vendor to
step in. Although this isn’t ideal, it might provide a workable
solution. Whatever the outcome is, the legal assistant and vendor need
to examine where the process failed. If the problem is identified and
addressed adequately, there is no reason not to use that vendor again.
If, however, the vendor and the paralegal can’t come to terms and fix
the problem, it’s time to go to another vendor.
“This whole industry is based on
service. The best service comes out of a good relationship that has
developed into a partnership. Once this partnership has developed, the
vendor and legal assistant equally are vested in what has to happen,”
McDonnell said. “This is where you will find vendors working late into
the night, being called on their cell phones on holidays or loading
boxes of documents into their own cars. They know it’s their job just as
much as it is the legal assistant’s. Plus, the vendor has the added
incentive of keeping a client satisfied and being around for the next
job.”
Forming a
Partnership
Being a legal assistant means sometimes working in a
stressful environment. During these times, paralegals can better avoid a
crisis when they have established a partnership with their vendors and
remain open to new ideas, solutions and services. This can only happen
if legal assistants learn to view communications with vendors as
opportunities to learn and grow their collection of tools to get the job
done.
Of course, not every phone call needs to
be returned, nor does every sales person need to be met. However, if
legal assistants can learn to effectively deal with the bombardment of
vendor pitches and get the most out of the contact, they will be better
equipped with knowledge and choices to find the solutions and get the
job done right. |
