The deadline is fast approaching to make a submission for the Association of Corporate Counsel’s Value Champions award.
It’s the first year for the program, which was created to recognize law department efforts and firm and client collaborations under the banner of the ACC Value Challenge. The deadline to submit a nomination at the
ACC web site is tomorrow.
Law department leaders can be nominated (or self-nominate) for in-house team projects that did not involve a law firm or firms and law department and law firm leaders can co-nominate firm/client partnerships.
Emily Jelich, vice president and assistant general counsel with the Royal Bank of Canada says RBC has submitted nominations on behalf of firms it works with.
“At RBC we looked at it as a great opportunity to highlight some of the law firms that have been looking for interesting and new opportunities to work with in-house counsel better,” says Jelich who is also a member of the ACC’s Value Challenge steering committee. “You can nominate law firms that are trying hard to figure out what this new world looks like and how they can react differently with their in-house partners.”
Jelich says the goal of the competition is to look at how value has been defined differently.
RBC nominated one of its external firms that does a lot of work for the company and last year responded positively to the fact RBC had been looking at a number of Lean Six Sigma projects.
“They participated with us in a Lean Six Sigma initiative on how we work together. Lawyers aren’t necessarily great believers in the fact that what they do is a process and that it can be brought down to that level. We thought it was impressive the firm would be willing to do that with us and it turned out to be a great experience. It required everyone to sit down and dedicate the time to deal with it which lead to an alternative fee arrangement.”
