In-House Counsel

Four ideas for how to tell law firms to best respond to your RFP

By Rees Morrison

Karen Kaplowitz of The New Ellis Group issues periodic newsletters, one of which contains several suggestions for how law firms can improve their RFP responses. Three of them would be good for your law department to suggest to the firms competing for your business.

Answer each question as briefly as possible. This will help your team review many responses from law firms and score them (See my post of Feb. 6, 2007: weight the components of law firms? proposal; and Dec. 18, 2006: technique to evaluate competitive proposals.).

Tailor bios of the lawyers likely to work on your matters so that they describe only the relevant work the lawyers have done.

Explain that deadlines are hard and fast (See my post of Nov. 23, 2008: advisability of letting firms decide how much time they need.).

Put firms on notice that they should be prepared to respond promptly if asked for clarification or additional detail.

Full post as published by Law Department Management on February 12, 2009 (boomark / email).