Moving Beyond the Billable Hour
Like many large legal departments, this team relied mostly on traditional hourly billing for its outside counsel engagements. Leadership wanted to shift more work to alternative fee arrangements, but there was no consistent way to request them.
Even when the team did request proposals, comparing them was a challenge in itself. Every firm answered in its own format, with different scope assumptions, levels of detail, and pricing structures. One firm might submit a blended rate, another a phased budget, and a third a loosely scoped estimate. Attorneys and legal operations had no reliable way to make direct comparisons, and the true cost of an engagement was often a surprise. Budgets were difficult to forecast, and firm selection often came down to familiarity rather than value.
The department needed a way to run consistent, data-driven RFPs at scale, with proposals that could actually be compared, and without creating a bottleneck in legal operations.
A Centralized Platform for Structured, Competitive Sourcing
The department partnered with Priori to centralize its RFP process in one platform, where every request, firm response, and pricing data point is captured in a single place. The team focused on two connected goals: making proposals directly comparable, and increasing the share of work priced under alternative fee arrangements.
Practice-Area Templates for Apples-to-Apples Comparisons
Standardization came first. Using Priori’s flexible RFP templates, the department built practice-area-specific templates for its most common types of work. Within each template, the team defined prescriptive project phases and pricing structures that every firm is asked to follow when responding.
The result: instead of a pile of mismatched proposals, every response arrives with comparable scope assumptions and fee breakdowns. Attorneys can evaluate pricing, staffing, and strategy side by side, assess value objectively, and make more informed selection decisions, without reconciling different formats by hand.
Making Alternative Fees the Default
With a consistent structure in place, the department could reliably ask firms to compete on alternative fee arrangements. Because the templates define phases and pricing up front, firms propose fixed and alternative fees against the same scope, making it clear which approach offers the best value and giving the team far greater cost certainty before work begins.
A Hybrid Model Built to Scale
Rather than routing every RFP through a central team, the department adopted a hybrid operating model. Legal operations serves as the program’s power users, creating and managing many RFPs directly, while individual attorneys are able to launch and run their own sourcing processes. This approach lets the program grow across the department without overloading any single team.
Adoption was driven largely by the platform’s intuitive interface. Usage expanded steadily across the legal department, with platform activity growing significantly in the program’s second year and a core group of regular users anchoring day-to-day sourcing.
Results That Scale Across the Department
Since launching the program, the department has built a sourcing engine that delivers measurable savings across a wide range of legal work:
More Than $35M in Cost Avoidance
Competitive, structured RFPs have avoided more than $35M in outside counsel spend across dozens of RFPs, with several large engagements alone generating multi-million-dollar cost avoidance.
~30% Average Savings
Matters sourced through Priori have reduced outside counsel costs by roughly 30% on average compared to initial proposals.
More Than $100M in Work Awarded Through a Competitive Process
More than $100M in legal work has been awarded to outside counsel through a transparent, structured process, giving leadership full visibility into how and why firms are selected.
True Apples-to-Apples Comparisons
Practice-area templates with prescriptive phases and pricing mean every proposal can be evaluated on the same terms.
Breadth Across Practice Areas
Alternative fee RFPs now run across a wide range of practice area, including employment, intellectual property, immigration, and consumer protection.
Greater Budget Predictability
By standardizing pricing structures and prioritizing alternative fee arrangements, the department has brought greater cost certainty to its legal budget and aligned outside counsel pricing with the company’s broader financial goals.
Looking Ahead: Smarter Templates and AI-Powered Sourcing
With the foundation in place, the department is focused on expanding the program further. Next steps include refining its templates using Priori’s new subphase capabilities for more granular matter scoping, broadening attorney self-service across the department, and exploring Scout, Priori’s AI-powered workflows for law firm search, RFP creation, and RFP cost analysis.
By combining standardized proposals, structured RFP workflows, and flexible attorney participation, the department has built a sourcing program that delivers consistent savings while maintaining high-quality legal support.
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