Lisa Kremer Brown believed it was time for Starbucks Corp.’s legal team to try a new blend. As the managing director of operations and strategy for law and corporate affairs at the Seattle-based company, she wanted the law department to start keeping track of what it was spending and where, and to have that data laid out in an understandable way.

The best way to get there, she thought, was with a thorough legal spend assessment. So a few years ago, she reached out to Vince Vetri, director of strategic analytics and reporting for legal business solutions at Elevate Services. Together, they created an informative, comprehensible assessment that’s helped shape pricing negotiations with firms and provided insight into spending trends for the department.