10. Batter up!  Who knew that baseball would be a central metaphor for this year’s Summit? Discussions about shrinking legal budgets and “doing more with less” led many speakers to evoke Michael Lewis’s Moneyball, a story about Billy Beane, the statistics-driven and unconventional general manager of the Oakland A’s, who built a competitive team on a fraction of the budget of other MLB teams. Very few legal departments have a New York Yankees-sized budget to spend on internal resources and outside counsel. But like Beane, Serengeti legal departments use statistics and benchmarks mined from Serengeti Tracker to obtain additional value and achieve better results. 

9. Strength in Numbers. Speaking of data and statistics, did you know that the almost 500 Serengeti legal departments share industry benchmarks through the Serengeti Analytics functionality on Tracker? Want to know the average hourly rate of a 16-year partner doing patent work in Dallas? Ever wonder if you are paying too much for that litigation associate in Philadelphia? Can you validate the hourly rate you are currently paying your outside counsel? The Serengeti Index Rate, based on the billions of dollars of invoices submitted through Serengeti, can tell you. Even better? The more legal departments that join Serengeti, the richer the data pool for the entire Serengeti eco-system. That’s real strength in numbers.

8. That would “B” as in Billions. Eric Laughlin, managing director, Corporate Counsel for Thomson Reuters, shared this jaw-dropper of a statistic: since the company’s inception in 2002, Serengeti has saved more than $3 billion for legal departments through the audit and enforcement of billing guidelines through Tracker’s electronic billing functionality. And that number doesn’t even include savings realized through budgets and other Tracker functionality.

7. I paid for what?! So what’s behind the $3B in costs savings? Some of the Serengeti legal departments entertained each other with a few of their favorite charges found on invoices from outside counsel, including:
- Three movies rented by outside counsel during business trip (cost: $29)
- Stapling and delivering cases to Partner (cost: $240)
- Create .pdf of documents (cost: $190)
- Printing documents from XYZ system (cost: $1,900)

6. Something for everyone. The Summit offered tailored sessions for advanced, long term customers as well as more recent, newer users of Tracker. The 150 attendees included members of the legal teams hailing from Nike (on the system for almost a decade) and American Airlines Mexico, Caribbean and Latin America (MCLA) Division (on the system for a mere 2 weeks).

5. Why I went to law school: I was told that there would be no math. Thought-leader and former general counsel of the Association of Corporate Counsel (ACC), Susan Hackett, opened her keynote address with the differences between the “Old Normal” and the “New Normal.” How to thrive in the New Normal? DATA. According to Susan, “Data drives demonstrable value.” It also drives continuous (and measurable) improvements, not to mention the power that data has to change behavior (both internal team members and outside counsel). Also discussed? How data and statistics can make lawyers, who are not known for their strong math skills, uncomfortable.

4. “Take small bites and breathe through your nose.” This was the advice that client relationship manager Derek Howell shared with attendees undertaking a global deployment of Serengeti during his session entitled “Rolling-Out Tracker Internationally: Don’t Go It Alone.” Other advice for going global? Build an “A-Team” comprised of representatives from the C-suite/executive team, corporate finance and IT. Maybe “A” in A-Team should stand for “Advocates”, which is especially important to have in a global deployment of Serengeti within a corporation.

3. Thomson Reuters debuts line of formal wear at Awards Dinners. This was the first year that Serengeti held its user summit since being acquired by Thomson Reuters in October 2010. Nothing embodied (literally) this “marriage” more than the tuxedo donned by long-time employee Drew Petty, the emcee of Thursday night’s “Golden Cheetah” Awards Dinner. And not just any tuxedo, but a bright ORANGE tuxedo. (Some might call it Thomson Reuters’ orange, but I’ll let our branding folks make the final judgment call.) The Golden Cheetah recognizes extraordinary achievements of Serengeti legal departments, like the lightening fast 12 day implementation of Sea World’s legal department onto Tracker. Who won first place at the Golden Cheetah? The legal department at Becton Dickinson, who was able to save an impressive $1 million before the first anniversary of their Serengeti implementation. 

2. It does take a village. The summit concluded with a panel discussion of Serengeti legal departments, including Nike, Intuit and Albemarle. Each legal department represented a common pain point experienced by Serengeti users: a decade-old implementation didn’t reflect the new realities of the legal department; lack of resources to deploy Serengeti to all practice groups within the department; and reports still being produced in a time-consuming, manual process. The answer to all of these problems:  Serengeti’s new professional services team. Each legal department on the panel took advantage of expert advisors who were deployed onsite to optimize the department’s use of Tracker. The new conundrum for these Tracker users: now that Serengeti is optimized, what are they going to do with all the extra time on their hands?

1. Stay connected to the village. Want to learn more Serengeti-related news, events and best practices? You can visit Serengeti’s recently re-launched website. Alternatively, boost the number of participants on the active Serengeti Law User Group on LinkedIn, or like Serengeti on Facebook or follow the company on Twitter (@SerengetiLaw). 

These are just a few of the newsworthy numbers, data points and anecdotes shared at the 2012 summit. Will you be at the next user summit? Stay connected to see when the next summit will be held.

We’re Listening @ WestlawSmallLaw is our program to inspire this conversation. We want to hear what you like about our products, what we need to improve, and also what new products and solutions you’d like to see us create to help your firm work better and smarter. 

Please look for our team at the We’re Listening @ WestlawSmallLaw booth #209 in the exhibit hall– you can’t miss it. While you’re there, don’t forget to pick up your free “ear buds.” 

You will have the opportunity to provide your feedback directly to our team, as well as on one of our many other channels.  So tell us what you think!  We’ve made it easy: 

Write it.
Post feedback on the message board at our booth. 

Say it.                  
Talk directly with our booth representatives or make a video recording at our booth. 

Tweet it.             
Use Twitter^® hashtag #NJSBAAC and follow us @WestlawSmallLaw throughout the conference to join in the live discussion and tweet your questions, comments, and feedback. 

We’re looking forward to hearing you there!

-The Westlaw Small Law Team

The project echoes Thomson Reuters commitment to corporate sustainability, and was initiated by longtime employee, Tim Nixon, director of Legal Content in Switzerland. Part of Tim’s role at Thomson Reuters is to help make transparent corporate sustainability efforts to determine what that data says about a business and how the information can be useful to investors. Prior to moving to Switzerland, Tim led the Green Team at the company’s Eagan, Minn., campus and was responsible for a number of initiatives to strengthen biodiversity there, including re-introducing native prairie to a large parcel on the campus and installing bluebird, wood duck and chimney swift houses.

To learn more about the project in Baar, click on the video clip below:

Thomson Reuters sponsorship is fitting because the rule of law, articulated so effectively in the U.S. Constitution, is at the heart of the work we do here every day.

“As part of our daily work, we get to see that these documents – the U.S. Constitution and its Bill of Rights – are not only historically important, but as alive today as they were at the time of these early printings,” said Mike Suchsland, president of the Legal business of Thomson Reuters at the unveiling reception for the exhibit. “According to Westlaw, in the first three months of this year, there were more than 600 decisions issued in federal courts involving the First Amendment alone,” said Suchsland.  

To learn more about this exhibit, visit “We the People:  The First Official Printing of the U.S. Constitution.” Or better yet, if you’re in the neighborhood you can stop by the Minnesota History Center and see it in person.

 The panel opened discussing the different types of regulations their respective industries face and how they implement those regulations. Avnet, discussing the recent amount of regulations created in the financial industry stated, “The last four years were the hardest 10 years of my life.” 

The discussion progressed to using and implementing technology in an effort to help the process of monitoring, organizing and prioritizing the information, as well as tools to help manage the regulatory structure within their organization. 

McCleskey recaps the session and highlights his takeaways.

In case you missed them, check out our other blog posts from the Global Ethics Summit including commentary on the evolving role of the Chief Ethical and Compiance Officer as well as Thomson Reuters being named to the World’s Most Ethical Companies list.

The panel featured a group covering multiple industries and years of experience, including: Elliott Fisch, director-internal audit and chief compliance officer, Easton-Bell Sports; Laura Merten, chief compliance officer, Walgreen Co.; Kimberly Strong, vice president and chief ethics and compliance officer, Consolidated Edison of New York; and Alan Yuspeh, senior vice president and chief ethics and compliance officer, Hospital Corporation of America.

The session began focusing on how the role has evolved over the last 20 years, emphasizing that the position has become a profession in its own right and covers a broader range of responsibilities, and that generally the level of resources has risen to meet these broader responsibilities.

Following the initial discussion of the evolution of the position, the conversation turned to the authority and independence required in the role, and how vital those elements are for the position to be successful within the organization.

McCleskey highlights the topics discussed during the session.

The Global Ethics Summit, held March 15-16 in New York, included numerous panel discussions that featured CEOs, board chairs, executive leaders, and government and regulatory officials offering in-depth analysis and best practices surrounding ethics and compliance. Each of these panels, including the Evolution of the Chief Ethics and Compliance Officer, is available via video on westlegaledcenter.com.

The conversation began by focusing on how ethics and compliance have an impact on an organization’s bottom line. The panel highlighted that the behavior of the chief executive officer sets the tone, encouraging how members of the organization operate and behave, how they deal with and set expectations for their partners and suppliers, and what they are or are not willing to do as a business.

As more organizations continue to grow and conduct business on a global scale, the discussion led to cultural differences internationally and how that can impact business. Continuing to focus on global growth, the panel agreed that the areas where they have the most issues are where they are growing the fastest, as well as how the rules of the game vary and are different in emerging markets.

Freeland briefly discusses her take-aways from the panel.

Every year companies face new challenges in developing and adopting “best practices” in their ethics and compliance policies as new and important laws are enacted around the world, and as prosecutors enforce formerly dormant laws with increasing regularity

From the recent attention the FCPA has received, a debate began between companies and other stakeholders on clarity of the law, recently stretching as far as the editorial pages of the Washington Post and other major media, curious to get a sense of what’s next. The same can be said for antitrust/cartel, IP protection and supply chain laws. The question that the best companies ask becomes not only how can you prepare a proper defense against enforcement of these laws within your organization, but how can you actively develop a culture that prevents any violations from occurring in the first place?

The 2012 Global Ethics Summit, the latest in the annual event co-hosted by Ethisphere and Thomson Reuters, helps answer this question by discussing today’s regulatory challenges, sharing best practices in ethics and compliance, and providing critical insight in legal developments around the world. The global dialogue taking place at the Summit will be led by board members and CEOs of the Fortune 100, some of the most respected general counsel, in-house counsel and other senior executives at leading companies, as well as senior regulators, academics and other key thought leaders in the ethics and compliance community.

In attendance at the Summit will be hundreds of senior executives—80 percent of which are at the C-level—and attorneys from the AmLaw 20, board members and others representing more than 30 countries. These folks will come together to hear and discuss the most important global issues facing companies today.

The Summit kicks off on Thursday, March 15 with Brackett Denniston, General Counsel of General Electric, discussing the global compliance issue his company faces, and concludes on Friday, March 16 with a conversation between Assistant Attorney General of the Criminal Division Lanny Breuer and Ethisphere’s Executive Director Alex Brigham. The two will discuss the future of the FCPA and other developments coming from the DOJ in the coming years. 

During the evening of March 15, Ethisphere will host the 2012 World’s Most Ethical Companies dinner in which the 2012 WME winners will be announced, along with a keynote presentation from former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and a presentation by the renowned Chicago improv comedy troupe Second City.

To read more about the Global Ethics Summit, please visit the event’s website at globalethicssummit2012.com or by going to ethisphere.com.