Legal Procurement and the Meaning of Life By Ronald Hedley
In his 2018 article entitled 10 Things You Need to Know as In-House Counsel, Sterling Miller offers compelling evidence to in-house lawyers, supporting his assertion that they (legal) should work with procurement professionals to better serve the needs of their clients, the legal department, and the business(es) they represent. Miller begins his thesis with the following definition of legal procurement: “Legal procurement focuses on buying legal services and managing the business side of relationships with law firms and other legal services providers. Buying and negotiations is their forté. They are based in the procurement department and report to the chief procurement officer. The majority of legal procurement professionals have a business/finance background rather than a legal background.” The above quote is from Silvia Hodges Silverstein, the founder and CEO of Buying Legal Council, which is the international trade organization for legal procurement. Recently, I had the privilege of interviewing her. My conversation with Silverstein likewise centered on legal procurement, but, unlike Miller, who speaks in his article to in-house lawyers, Silverstein speaks truth to procurement professionals. Her message is clear: “Get involved in the legal category!” Silverstein is adamant about procurement professionals venturing into the final frontier of organizational procurement. She added, “What are you waiting for? If not you, who? If not now, when? [You] need to reach out to the CEO or the CFO and get to know their in-house counsel and see how [procurement] can help [legal]. This is an opportunity.” “In this world, you only get what you grab for.”—Giovanni Boccaccio
The Meaning of Life During our interview, Silverstein was fending off the loving caresses (and bites) of her newly adopted family member, a German shepherd-Husky-Chow Chow-pariah-blend puppy named Rose. When the Silverstein family adopted Rose from the Humane Society, they were not only gaining a loving family member, they were contributing to humanity, or, if you will, caninity. According to the Humane Society of the United States, “Each year, it is estimated that more than one million adoptable dogs and cats are euthanized in the United States, simply because too many pets come into shelters and too few people consider adoption when looking for a pet.” The website continues, “The number of euthanized animals could be reduced dramatically if more people adopted pets instead of buying them. When you adopt, you save a loving animal by making them part of your family and up shelter space for another
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animal who might desperately need it. When you adopt, you can also feel proud about helping an animal in need. [When you adopt] you’ll change a homeless animal’s whole world.” (“Top Reasons to Adopt a Pet”. The Humane Society of the United States. 2020) Raising a puppy and starting one’s own company share remarkable similarities. Both endeavors require discipline, patience, and diligence. And both have potential long-term positives. Raising a puppy like Rose in a loving environment will provide lifetime companionship. Running a company like Buying Legal Council can change the world by educating others and by helping them realize their potential.
Raising Buying Legal Council Silverstein began this adoption process in 2002. At the time, she was living in Italy and working for a law firm that specialized in marketing. When she asked her managing partner about their client’s buying practices, Silverstein discovered that there was no research on the topic. She described her next step: “I went to [the managing partner] and said, ‘I want to do research on how clients make purchasing decisions in Europe.’” Silverstein’s managing partner thought her idea had possibilities and gave her the go-ahead. Silverstein described her next step: “In 2003, I researched how [law firm] clients in the UK, France, Germany and Italy make purchasing decisions. To my knowledge, that was the first research ever [conducted] on that topic in Europe.” Silverstein then shared how she took her research one step further: “I wrote my PhD on purchasing decisions and legal services at Nottingham Law School. I finished in 2009, and I have been teaching at law schools and writing about it ever since. I have been teaching at Columbia Law School and Fordham Law School. I [also] lecture at Harvard.” Silverstein then connected her research to procurement. She recalled, “In 2010, I was at a legal technology conference, and I met with business clients from procurement. Up until then, I had never spoken to people from procurement. They were aliens to me. I had only spoken with GCs (General Councils), CFOs, and HR directors for employment law services.”
