First Law

Panels get a beating

Legal week - Thursday 23rd October 2003

Extract from an article by Philip Hoult

Anthony Armitage, director of legal services tendering firm First Law, says that companies and other purchasers of legal services, such as local authorities, often make law firms go through needless hoops.

Armitage, who has conducted reviews for a number of organisations, says that it is important for people carrying out the review to focus at the outset on specifying the legal services being put out to tender.

“We ask very carefully-crafted questions and spend a lot of time preparing the specification,” he says.

“Often it is not clearly spelt out what the firms are tendering for. Information such as the total volume of work being put out to tender or the typical value of each instruction are often left out.

“Unless you are very thorough, you can get inundated with questions, the answers to which you may have to repeat to everybody else who is applying.”