In-House Counsel - Fall 2010

Carla Swansburg has poked around the
AVI, looking at reviews of firms and
lawyers, and has posted a few positive
evaluations of her own on outside firms
in Canada she has dealt with regularly on
litigation matters.
Swansburg has become the unof-
ficial AVI spokesperson for Ontario’s
some 450 ACC members. She regularly
speaks to lawyers’ groups about the
benefits of the new search-and-evalu-
ation tool.
“It’s still on the low side in terms of
content for Canadian counsel, so I’m
hoping that through spreading the
word, we’ll have a lot more Canadian
in-house lawyers using it because its
success is dependent on the volume
and quality of assessments. Trying to
get members to take the time to go in
and evaluate firms in a full and frank
way is taking some time, but we need
that foundation of data to make the in-
dex a real utility for us.”
Her message to colleagues is that they
already make phone calls, send e-mails
and participate in online forums either
looking for or commenting on outside law-
yers who practise in various areas of law in
different jurisdictions.
“That conversation is not the most ef-
ficient and targeted way to collect or get
information, since not everyone responds
or participates,” says Swansburg. “Now, if
you’re looking for a recommendation for
a law firm in a particular jurisdiction, you
don’t have to do that anymore. You can go
to the index without having to make cold
calls to colleagues that you don’t know
very well.”
“This is a huge opportunity to have a
tool that allows us to more effectively
and more efficiently search for appro-
priate counsel. It saves time — but more
importantly, it provides external vali-
dation or an endorsement, or not, of a
firm or a lawyer,” says Swansburg, who,
prior to joining RBC as senior counsel
in 2005, practised in the Toronto-based
litigation groups at Ogilvy Renault LLP
and before that, Osler, Hoskin & Har-
court LLP, where she articled.
“In a sense, the value index can serve as a
virtual reference letter for firms or lawyers.”
BRP’s Martel says the AVI enables
o far the AVI has revealed
that members tend to evalu-
ate firms more when they’re
satisfied than not, observes
Krebs. To date, the average
overall rating of a firm is 4. 3 out of 5.
However, when in-house counsel clients
are dissatisfied, the area that consis-
tently earns the lowest ratings involves
predictable costs and budgeting skills.
By contrast, firms have generally scored
high marks on their legal expertise.
The results don’t surprise Krebs, who
prior to joining the ACC as its executive
director (as his current position was then

How the index works 

ASSOCIATION of Corporate Counsel
(ACC) members score external
counsel using a five-point scale
(1=poor, 5=excellent) on six criteria:
 Understands objectives and
expectations
 Legal expertise
 Efficiency and process
management
 Responsiveness and
communication
 Predictable cost and
budgeting skills
 Results delivered and execution
ACC member-evaluators also
answer the question: Would you
hire this firm again? In addition, they
can elaborate on their opinions of a
firm’s work by adding comments to
their evaluations.
 Members can search the ACC
Value Index (AVI) to view evaluation
results based on firm name, practice
area (such as litigation, or banking
and financial services, or corporate
governance), location or minimum
scores — and contact a reviewer for
more information or to discuss the firm
evaluated in more personal detail.
ACC members to exchange informa-
tion—“the good, the bad and the
ugly”—on outside lawyers and firms,
though most of the feedback, so far, has
not been overly negative.
“Evaluations run between ‘excellent’
and ‘satisfactory,’ so you have to read be-
tween the lines. But, in my opinion, all of
the reviews seem to be truthful since I as-
sume people are undertaking this exercise
in good faith to share knowledge within
our in-house community.”
known) in 1991, began his legal career
in 1975 as assistant legal general counsel
with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.