Jonathan P. Bellis

Consultant

Jonathan P. Bellis is a Vice President at Hildebrandt International. Jon has over twenty years of experience helping law firms and corporate and public sector law departments apply sound management concepts, methods and programs, and effective systems and technologies, to their operations.

PRACTICE OVERVIEW

Hildebrandt International provides management and technology assistance, and survey and benchmarking data and services, to many of the leading law firms and law departments in the United States. The practice also serves law firms and multinational companies based in Europe and the Asia Pacific region.

These projects involve overall client satisfaction, effectiveness, quality, efficiency, management of costs, organization, staffing, compensation, performance management, mix of inside and outside legal resources, outside counsel management, litigation management, intellectual property function and processes, and benchmarking and best practice s information resources.

Working in conjunction with its strategic alliance partner, Baker-Robbins & Co., technology services include assessment, planning, selection, and implementation of systems and applications used by lawyers to perform and manage their work. For some clients, we provide turnkey solutions that bring together multiple software vendors into an integrated solution. For other clients we provide strategic assessment and planning assistance to guide their technology investments and decision-making.

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PROJECT EXPERIENCE – LAW DEPARTMENTS

Jon joined Hildebrandt from PricewaterhouseCoopers. At PwC, he established the law department consulting practice in the mid-1980s. Jon has worked with hundreds of law departments in the US and also the European and AsiaPacific regions. Since the early 1990s, he has led the identification and definition of trends and best practices in global legal function management and technologies.

Jon designed and developed the annual PricewaterhouseCoopers Law Department Spending Survey (LDSS) in the mid-1980s. LDSS is the most complete statistical survey of Fortune 500 company law departments. It provides benchmarking, performance measurement, cost, compensation, management practices, and other valuable information.

Jon has assisted many corporate and government legal functions – inside and outside the United States – in conducting comprehensive assessment, planning, transformation, and implementation projects as well as more focused performance improvement projects. Examples include:

Conducted reviews and assessments of law department management, strategic plans, organization, staffing, compensation, client satisfaction, and overall effectiveness.
Developed inside and outside counsel management programs, including policies, procedures, guides, manuals and training materials and programs.
Developed claims and litigation management program and systems.
Helped clients through all aspects of systems, technology and office automation improvement projects, including strategy development, requirements definition, vendor selection, and implementation.
Conducted full systems lifecycle projects in the areas of case/matter management, document management, intellectual property, knowledge management, litigation support, intranets, and extranets.
Developed multifaceted performance management programs, involving the identification of performance indicators and development of specific evaluation methods and management tools.
Performed management audits of the legal departments of Federal, state and local agencies.

PUBLICATIONS, SPEECHES AND INDUSTRY LEADERSHIP

Spoken and written widely on law department and law firm management and technology topics. Conducted or participated in numerous law firm and law department retreats and offsite meetings.
Initiated and published the Perspectives in Corporate Legal Management newsletter, a highly-regarded thought leadership periodical.
Contributed a series of “Best Practices” articles on law department management and technology to Law Governance Review.
Chaired many of the Price Waterhouse/PricewaterhouseCoopers New York Legal Tech conferences from the mid-1980s through the late 1990s.
Coordinated the Price Waterhouse role in the development of the Uniform Task-Based Management System and the Legal Electronic Data Exchange Standard (LEDES) which formed the basis for electronic billing in the legal industry.
Active participant and speaker in the International Bar Association’s Corporate Counsel Committee. Keynoted conferences and seminars of such organizations as the Australian Corporate Lawyers Association, Conference Board Europe, European Corporate Lawyers Association, Hawksmere Seminars on Managing International Law Departments, Legal IT Forum, and Legal Solutions Europe.

Education

Georgetown University, MBA
University of Virginia, B.A., Government and Foreign Affairs

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Understanding Law Department Cost Management [+]
05/01/2010 By Lauren M. Chung, Jonathan P. Bellis

Pressure on general counsel to reduce legal costs is not a new phenomenon. Prior economic downturns – in particular, in the early 1990s - led to the increased sophistication and innovation in the management of legal functions that we have observed during the past two decades. However, the current environment has increased this pressure to a new level, as law department managers seek to find new ways to drive down outside legal costs and operate more efficiently.

According to the 2009 Hildebrandt Law Department Survey, law departments are indeed changing the way they operate. They are implementing a wide range of cost management strategies as a way to cope and thrive in today’s economic environment. They are adopting new ways of doing business that demonstrate aggressive and innovative thinking on cost containment.
Strategic Priorities for General Counsel in 2010 [+]
02/10/2010 By Jonathan P. Bellis

The year 2010 is shaping up to be a “best of times . . . worst of times” year for general counsel. On the one hand, general counsel - and the senior lawyers and professionals who help them lead their law departments - are under extraordinary pressure to reduce costs. Of course, there is nothing new in the expectation that in-house lawyers should “do more with less.” It has been expressed – especially in times of economic distress – repeatedly over the past two decades. What is new is the extent to which law departments have been forced to reduce total legal costs and to find new ways to operate more efficiently.
Learning How To Let Go [+]
02/16/2004 By Jonathan P. Bellis

© 2004 ALM Properties Inc. All rights reserved. This article is reprinted with permission from Legal Times

General Counsel need to be able to justify the size of their department -- and to recognize when it's in everyone's best interest to outsource legal work.

"Why do we have so many lawyers?" That’s a question corporate managers have been asking with increasing frequency in recent years as companies weigh the benefits of bankrolling in-house legal departments versus outsourcing more work to law firms.

The trend in corporate cost-cutting programs has been to shift or eliminate fixed costs from the corporate center. From a corporate budgeting perspective, law departments are a fixed cost—and legal work has many characteristics that make it a candidate for corporate outsourcing.

In the face of such challenges, law department managers need to be able to articulate the value that in-house lawyers bring to the organization —not just cost advantages, but how they contribute to the success of the business overall.

Every law department, even those not under such scrutiny, should be able to answer this question. It’s essential that law departments maintain basic data to support decision making. Managers should conduct periodic reviews to assess alternative approaches to legal cost and value management, particularly the mix and scope of in-house and outside resources.
Improving the Contracting Function [+]
12/10/2003 By Jonathan P. Bellis

In recent years there has been a lot of discussion and analysis concerning the "value-added role" of in-house counsel. (See Legal Director, February 2003). Much attention has been paid to the obvious areas – effectively coordinating major deals and transactions, providing solid stewardship for the company’s key intellectual assets, managing major litigation, and navigating through the encroaching shoals of corporate governance and compliance. In this context, more routine, day-to-day legal functions have inevitably been pushed to the back burner. Contracting is one such area.

Opportunities

The contracting function represents a significant opportunity for law departments to exhibit leadership in providing value-added services within the company. Inside lawyers have a unique opportunity to combine effective legal advice with business understanding and company knowledge in leading and implementing change programs that are multidisciplinary in both the skills they employ and the organizational units they affect. The contracting function is especially well suited to this approach.

One of the benefits of strengthening the contracting function is that the return on investment can be seen in concrete financial terms. Improving contract management and administration can reduce the risk of losing revenue owed to the company through contractual arrangements such as licensing agreements. Providing systematic approaches and resources to the task of monitoring contract payments and terms can reduce financial leakage.
Evolving Role of In-House Counsel: Adding Value to the Business [+]
02/01/2003 By Jonathan P. Bellis

Major portions of this article appeared in Legal Director (February 2003)

Recent events in the United States, United Kingdom and elsewhere have fostered a global discussion about the role of lawyers inside companies. Corporate general counsel and law departments face new responsibilities, heightened expectations and unprecedented challenges in the new business environment.

In our twenty years of experience working with hundreds of law departments inside and outside the U.S., we have had the opportunity to help define the evolving role of inside lawyers and best practices in legal function management. Some of these best practices are long standing and have become intrinsic and permanent features of the legal function. Other roles and critical success factors have evolved over the years in response to a range of forces. The dynamic elements of the inside lawyer's role have been driven by new models and approaches to corporate management, evolving client expectations regarding legal services, and trends in the external legal marketplace and legislative/regulatory environment. Combined, these static and dynamic elements represent the characteristics of a value-added inside counsel role.

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