Killing the Billable Hour: AFA Lessons from Two Pioneers of Legal Sourcing

Bob Harchut and Ashley Woodill are two of the early pioneers in the legal sourcing industry. They and a handful of others were among the first to implement alternative fee arrangements for the majority of legal matters for a Fortune 500 company—including the use of reverse auctions to obtain AFAs for matters expected to cost $250,000 or more.

As Vice President & Associate General Counsel at GlaxoSmithKline before he retired in 2016, Bob Harchut led the Global External Legal Relations Team, which was responsible for selecting all outside counsel and other legal service providers used by the GSK Law Department worldwide.

Prior to that role, which he held for eight years, Harchut spent 23 years at GSK, including 11 years as head of the litigation team responsible for hiring a multitude of law firms and other legal service providers. He now runs a consulting practice helping legal departments improve their operations.

Ashley Woodill is currently the Assistant General Counsel at Wells Fargo, leading both the Outside Counsel and Third Party Risk Management functions. Ashley worked for GSK from 2009 to 2017, first in Global External Legal Relations before moving to a role as an Associate Managing Attorney. She also led the Legal Operations function at TD Bank before joining Wells Fargo.

In this webinar, Bob and Ashley will be joined by David Falstein, PERSUIT’s Vice President of Customer Success and Strategy. They will share how AFAs and reverse auctions have the potential to save millions in legal fees for in-house legal teams—while still maintaining the quality work and positive outcomes needed from your legal partners.

Topics to be discussed include:

  • The advantages of AFAs—even for complex, high-cost matters
  • What happens when firms are invited to participate in a reverse auction process
  • The financial savings AFAs can generate
  • How AFAs impact legal outcomes and firm relationships.

See for yourself why the world's top in-house legal teams choose PERSUIT.

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