"Look At Your Spend. Then Ask Better Questions. "The average Fortune 500 company spends between $100 to $150 million a year on outside counsel," Rubin told me. "But much of that is still being allocated without a structured framework for risk or complexity." If that sounds familiar, it's because many legal departments still lack the muscle memory or the mandate to challenge their own assumptions about who they work with and why."
"Rubin's team often runs a simple but revealing exercise with new clients: they ask legal departments to map their outside counsel engagements on a basic risk-complexity matrix. "We literally create a 3×3: high, medium, and low risk versus high, medium, and low complexity," she explained. Then they categorize all legal projects from the past year, flag who handled them, and compare that against spend."
"The results almost always tell a story. A large portion of work that ends up at Biglaw could, and arguably should, be handled by more targeted providers. "That doesn't mean high-risk work should leave," Rubin clarified. "Big firms are best at that. But there is an overwhelming amount of medium-risk, medium-complexity work that can be done faster and more cost-effectively by others.""
Many in-house legal teams allocate tens to hundreds of millions to outside counsel without structured frameworks for risk or complexity. Mapping engagements on a 3×3 risk-complexity matrix reveals mismatches between spend and matter needs. Big law handles most high-risk matters appropriately, but substantial medium-risk, medium-complexity work can be performed faster and more cost-effectively by targeted providers. Data-driven selection should consider jurisdiction familiarity, vendor experience, track record, and success metrics rather than gut instinct or legacy relationships. Legal marketplaces can match departments with specialized providers, creating defensible, efficient outside counsel strategies and reducing unnecessary Biglaw spend.
Read at Above the Law
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