panel-design-selection

What it does

The skill designs and evaluates outside counsel panels for in-house legal teams. It focuses on creating a panel structure, defining how firms are selected, running right-sourcing analysis to identify misallocation of work to expensive providers, and assessing coverage gaps across practice areas, geographies, and capabilities. It supports building panel frameworks from scratch or formalizing informal arrangements and defines weighted selection criteria for evaluating firms.

How it works

The skill outlines modes (Panel Design, Selection Criteria, Right-Sourcing Analysis, Coverage Gap Analysis) that produce formal documents and a GC briefing note immediately, using inline-stated assumptions. It emphasizes creating formal documents such as a Panel Design Document and GC Briefing Note, or a Selection Criteria Matrix and GC Briefing Note, depending on the chosen mode. It describes how to map work types to provider types (A/B/C tiers), identify mismatches, and estimate financial impact for reallocations. It also prescribes presenting next steps, recommended pilots, and governance rules. The ABC framework for tiering defines Tier A (Complex/Strategic), Tier B (Specialist/Substantial), and Tier C (Routine/Volume). It cautions not to relocate work away from trusted relationships without noting relationship dimensions and to propose piloting changes first.

When to use it

Triggered when there is a need to design or restructure an external counsel panel, determine how many firms are needed, establish firm selection criteria, assess right-sourcing, panel gaps, consolidations, or sourcing decisions such as whether to use BigLaw for particular work. Triggers include phrases like design our panel, how many firms do we need, panel structure, firm selection criteria, right-sourcing, and panel gaps.

What it can touch

The skill references tools and concepts such as the ABC tiering framework and the concept of a Sources section in the Panel Design Document, but it does not list concrete software tools beyond the notion of producing documents (.docx) and employing the described taxonomy for tiering and scoring. It instructs to produce documents like a Panel Design Document and a GC Briefing Note, with an external pilot recommendation for pilots, and to include a Sources section in outputs.

Caveats

The skill indicates outputs are two documents per mode (e.g., Panel Design Document and GC Briefing Note for Mode 1; Selection Criteria Matrix and GC Briefing Note for Mode 2; Right-Sourcing Analysis and GC Briefing Note for Mode 3; Coverage Assessment and GC Briefing Note for Mode 4). It requires inline assumptions and cautions against expanding beyond stated content; it emphasizes that the output should reflect the input description and include costs or financial impact only when the mode prescribes it. It notes that the ABC framework and recommended pilots are part of the output and that the GC decisions required should be detailed.