Tag Archives for " negotiation tools "

The Power of a Successful Contract Negotiation

By Michael Feit | Contract Negotiations , White Papers

Contract negotiations not only set product/vendor pricing for the next contracted term, but can also determine the pricing path your firm will be on for years after. We all know the story–3-5% increases year over year. Once you lock in at a price and terms, this becomes your new baseline for future negotiations. Vendors will only want to increase over your current price.

Not to fear, price corrections can be made at your next contract negotiations. Feit Consulting sees about 15-20% of the large law firm market paying substantially higher than the market mid-point. Firms that fall into this category won’t be able to reach the market mid-point in one contract cycle; it could take several cycles to price-correct.

There are two secrets to securing optimal pricing in your next legal information contract negotiations: planning and market knowledge.

Allocating enough time to plan for negotiations is one element. Waiting until close to contract expiration is one of the worst mistakes a firm can make. Start the process early. Market knowledge is the other essential tool for achieving optimal results in the negotiation process. This allows one to gauge whether your firm’s current contracts are on par with the market, or above or below. Having this intel affects your leverage in negotiations. Due to secret pricing, no one firm can truly know whether their contract is exceptional or fair without outside knowledge.

Get the tools you need NOW in order to successfully negotiate and optimize your firm’s legal information resources and pricing. Working with a consultant is one option to obtain the market knowledge for benchmarking your firm’s contracts. Another option is Feit Consulting’s Optimizing Legal Information Pricing. Learn more here.

Legacy Contracts: The Challenges New Librarians Face

By Michael Feit | Contract Negotiations , Pricing , White Papers

One of the tougher situations a law librarian can encounter is accepting a new position at a law firm and immediately being faced with tight deadlines for negotiating online contract renewals. Legacy contracts are a conglomerate of past points of view regarding what the firm needed in terms of content and the cost the firm was willing to bear at the time of negotiation. The secretive nature of online pricing just adds to the dilemma faced by librarians in this position, because it is impossible to truly know if what is being offered is best in market pricing.

If your legacy contract pricing is way above market, reaching a reasonable benchmark in your current negotiation cycle can be difficult or impossible without any knowledge of market pricing. In many cases, even with market knowledge, it can take several negotiation cycles to achieve contracts closer to market rates.

Feit Consulting’s latest white paper, Optimizing Legal Information Pricing was designed as a valuable tool to guide and assist information professionals through the online contract negotiating process. By providing insight into market metrics for Lexis and Westlaw, along with other key legal information vendors, the report outlines best practices for a contract audit and provides a handy checklist of dos and don’ts for the negotiation process. With a future forecast of what to expect from online vendors, this white paper is an essential resource for preparing for negotiations and successfully navigating the negotiation process.

Click here for more information on this resource.

Our “Secret Sauce” is Revealed

By Kate | Contract Negotiations , Pricing , White Papers

​In a secret pricing market, how can firms truly know whether their contract is on par with the market without external advisement? Our new white paper, Optimizing Legal Information Pricing, shares benchmarking information for firms to begin to understand how their contracts measure up.

Many may shake their heads, wondering why we would give away this information.

Having knowledge of appropriate metrics and a pricing framework only provides a foundation upon which to build in your contract negotiations. Any negotiation is a give-and-take process, with two sides of the table deciding to collaborate together in order to find a mutually beneficial middle ground. There are still many other elements that factor into the negotiation process including practice areas, size, vendor rep, product/content mix, vendor preference and many more.

We estimate that 15% of the large law firm market is substantially overpaying, a majority of which are AmLaw 100 or based out of New York City. This report serves as a point of reference for law firm administrators and legal information decision makers to initiate the process of correcting pricing for their firm. For the rest of the market, this report brings assurance to how your contracts and proposals for new products compares and takes into consideration multiple variables and parameters.

In May 2017, Feit Consulting will release our next white paper, Optimizing Legal Information Pricing, in which we share revealing benchmarks every firm will need to have in contract review and negotiations. With 16 years in this business, we’ve accumulated a knowledge base unparalleled in legal information; we call it our “secret sauce”.

In sum, Feit Consulting’s Optimizing Legal Information Pricing report reveals valuable, essential information we think every law firm should have. It gets you to a level playing field. Firms that order the report pre-release can have up to five legal information contracts evaluated against our benchmarks. For more information, click here.

Of course usage matters!

By Michael Feit | Best Practices , Contract Negotiations , White Papers

Usage is the purest barometer of how valuable a tool is to an organization. How much you use any product or service is your best indicator of how valuable it is.

So maybe this is why legal information vendors no longer want to talk about usage. If it is clear that usage has declined, then discussing this would undermine any reasoning for an increase in your next contract.

When Lexis and Westlaw considered usage as a factor in pricing, many big-city and larger Am-Law firms had the highest usage. Therefore, these firms were unfortunately locked in at higher pricing than the rest of the market.

Today, while these vendors do not recognize usage as a relevant factor, this does not mean your firm should acquiesce.

If your firm is curious about metrics to use in contract negotiations and how your firm compares to the market, consider our next report, Optimizing Legal Information Pricing.