Performance measures: benefit or bane? Are they the mechanism by which legal departments can drive efficiency and lower the cost of their external lawyers, or a pointless and intrusive device which potentially damages the relationship between internal and external lawyer?
Almost every in-house legal team I work with has a strong, albeit disparate, view on the subject. A recurring issue is whether they can be used to assess objectively the value delivered by external law firms and the comparative performance of one against the other, or are they wholly irrelevant and, indeed, objectionable?
