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.
However, 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 (benchmarking your contracts).
Allocating enough time to plan for negotiations is one element. Due to secret pricing, no one firm can truly know whether their contract is exceptional or fair without outside knowledge. Benchmarking your legal information contracts is a worthwhile exercise to understanding your starting place going into contract negotiations.
Feit Consulting has been a leader in optimizing legal information resources for firms since 2001.
Have your legal information contracts benchmarked by Feit Consulting, and receive a firm-specific benchmark. Alternatively, Feit Consulting’s white paper, Optimizing Legal Information Pricing shares Feit’s market benchmarks on Spend Per Attorney, Discounts and more.
Michael Feit earned his J.D. from the Loyola University School of Law in Chicago and was an executive at Westlaw before founding Feit Consulting 16 years ago. Feit Consulting partners with law firm administrators and legal information professionals to optimize vendor contracts and the management and delivery of legal information resources by providing leading-edge, customized solutions. Contact Michael at mike@feitconsulting.com