The pressure is on legal departments to control outside counsel spend and take a disciplined and strategic approach to using their resources. But which steps should in-house lawyers take? Should they tackle outside counsel guidelines or work on rate and timekeeper management? How about a firm convergence project?

In-house lawyers trying to make these tough decisions may benefit from picking up a new legal spend management primer released Monday from the Buying Legal Council, an international trade organization for professionals involved in legal procurement. The primer outlines some of the most common legal spend management initiatives and provides a “matrix” that rates these initiatives to give legal departments a better idea of where to focus.