Intel Legal Ops Head Says E-billing Crucial to In-House Function

E-billing and analytics are at the core of Mike Haven’s job keeping legal operations on track at Intel Corp., including making sure that the tech company is getting value from its outside law firms.

“There are so many things that could be fixed or improved, and you can’t try to boil the ocean because you won’t get anything done,” Haven, Intel’s associate general counsel and head of legal operations, said. “If you have an e-billing system, you can go in and very easily see that data, and you can use that to drive strategic decisions about how you manage your outside counsel relationships.”

Bloomberg Law is conducting a Q&A series highlighting some of the legal industry’s most important relationships: the often fruitful but sometimes complicated connections between in-house departments and their outside law firms. We’re talking with general counsel and legal operations leaders across industries about how they select outside lawyers and handle issues like billing, fees, and tracking performance.

Haven, who joined San Francisco-based Intel in April 2020, is also the president of the Corporate Legal Operations Consortium. Previously, he worked for Gap Inc. and NetApp Inc., after starting his career with law firms Shepard & Haven and K&L Gates.

Intel works with a wide range of outside firms, including a smaller number that are part of a preferred counsel panel, Haven said. Since 2007, Perkins Coie and Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr together have handled over a quarter of Intel’s federal litigation, according to a Bloomberg Law review of court dockets. The company has also been represented by Munger Tolles & Olsen, Weil Gotshal & Manges, Kirkland & Ellis, and Stoel Rives, among others.

He spoke with Bloomberg Law about the value of e-billing and automation, the importance of using data from outside law firms to come up with alternative fee arrangements that benefit both sides, and the need for “quick wins” in adopting legal technology.

This conversation has been edited for clarity and length.

Bloomberg Law: Of all those areas that legal ops need to manage, which is the most important?

Mike Haven: Well, the most fundamental thing that will help is to implement an electronic billing system because that keeps all of the outside spend in one place and allows you to run analytics and determine focus areas or areas of opportunity that can be improved. We have a new partner that we’re just onboarding for e-billing.

Another thing I would point out is that communication is absolutely key. Making sure that the law firm understands the challenges that you’re facing with other organizations in the company, for example. If the finance team is demanding to see accruals by a certain time every month, let the law firm know that you have this requirement that you have to meet, and law firms need to help you meet that by giving you their accruals data by this time of the month. And that works both ways—the law firm should also be communicating its challenges to the in-house team so that they can truly work together as partners, and not in silos.

BL: Can you give me an example of why e-billing is so important?

MH: There’s a metric called timekeepers per full-time employee which looks at how many timekeepers the outside law firm has on a particular matter and how many timekeepers it would take to be the equivalent of one full-time employee.

If you consider the full-time employee to be 2,000 hours per year, how many timekeepers does that firm use to get to 2,000 hours per year? If the ratio is high, that demonstrates inefficiency because everybody who gets put on that matter has to get up to speed on your business and on the matter itself, and that takes time. If you have an e-billing system, you can go in and very easily see that data, and you can use that to drive strategic decisions about how you manage your outside counsel relationships. So, fundamentally, having the technology in place to run analytics on your outside counsel relationships is key.

BL: What are some other types of data that you need from outside counsel?

MH: We’re looking at all sorts of things from them, like analyzing the potential cost of a matter based on the cost of prior similar matters. If law firms have data on prior similar matters that can help inform a pricing arrangement for the current matter, that is super helpful. Everything from looking at a law firms’ margin on what it earns above and beyond its cost is something that can be very helpful in terms of constructing an alternative fee arrangement. So there are a lot of different metrics we can look at that help inform whether we’re getting good value from a relationship, and the list is long.

The ultimate outcome there is determining price based on the value that is provided by the service to the organization, and we’re starting to see some companies dive into value-based pricing. That’s something that’s very interesting, and I think it’s where the industry is going. The legal industry is historically bad at pricing, but we’re improving, and movements like CLOC and other innovations that are happening out there are helping us move away from the billable hour and to other models of pricing that I think will be much more sensible in the future.

BL: What are some alternate fee arrangements that you feel are most efficient?

MH: Getting things to a fixed fee model is a very efficient way to do things, and one of the metrics a lot of companies are looking at these days is the percentage of matters on fixed fee. Now, the challenge there is ensuring that both sides are getting a fair deal.

What we’re seeing these days is a lot more law firms open to having that discussion and figuring out a good, fixed fee arrangement that saves a lot of resources and time, and they’re not doing things that hourly billing requires from a resourcing perspective. Then there are a lot of creative ways to construct fixed fees that protects each of the parties in the event that something unexpected happens. So there’s a lot going on in that space.

BL: Where is the legal operations field headed?

MH: CLOC has been a driving force in helping to transform the industry. CLOC isn’t alone in this endeavor—there are a lot of people working in a lot of places on that out there, so we share our mission with others, but CLOC has been a driving force and we want to bring new speed and efficiency to the industry. We want to accelerate digital transformation. We want to increase the diversity pipeline for the industry. There’s a lot that we’re doing in all of those swim lanes. And the future is exciting.

We’re in the midst of an explosion right now in process automation. Before you can automate anything, you have to have a good processes. But what we’re seeing out in the industry is people focusing on automating good processes and saving tons of resource time as a result of process automation. So that’s been a really fun trend to watch develop because I’ve been working on process automation for a number of years and only recently has it truly exploded.

We’re also starting to see AI make a real difference in contracting, which is another very exciting development in the progression of our industry. Specifically, AI in the context of negotiating lower risk, lower complexity agreements, I think is a fascinating space right now. We’re seeing some real great technology in that area, and we’re piloting some of that at Intel. It’s really exciting to see.

BL: A lot of legal departments have trouble convincing their companies to invest in legal technology and automation or are just starting to adopt more legal operations. Do you have any advice for them?

MH: Legal operations can be overwhelming, especially when you come into a department and you’re the only person doing it. There are so many things that could be fixed or improved, and you can’t try to boil the ocean because you won’t get anything done. It’s really important to go around on a listening tour, establish a few key themes, focus on those priorities.

You have to make a business case, and you have to explain what the ROI is going to be. Key to that is measuring your processes now, before the process automated, before the technology is put in place. Measure your processes now, and then come up with a hypothesis about how much time and or money will be saved as a result of automation. Once you convince them to allow you to do it, measure the process again on the back end and show the value that has been derived. Get some quick wins to start building some credibility and show the department the value that you can bring. And then people get excited and want you to do more.