Case Study - ACE Corporate Legal DepartmentCase Study - ACE Corporate Legal DepartmentManaging Global Corporate Legal Spend

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ACE Group Corporate Legal Department Overview:

The ACE Group is one of the world’s largest multiline property and casualty insurers. With operations in 53 countries, ACE provides commercial and personal property and casualty insurance, personal accident and supplemental health insurance, reinsurance and life insurance to a diverse group of clients.

ACE Limited, the parent company of the ACE Group, is listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE: ACE) and is a component of the S&P 500 index.

In 2005, the Deputy General Counsel of ACE Group, Bob Turrin, approached LSG to see if it could add value to his corporate legal department.

ACE’s Critical Business Issues for their Corporate Legal Department and LSG’s Solution

1. Managing and controlling external fee earner rates and expenses

Managing and controlling ACE’s external counsels’ rates and expenses was important for ACE’s corporate legal department.

The Advocator System® enables designated ACE ‘users’ to approve rates and expenses of counsel from across the globe providing cost visibility and control.

Once the rates are approved by the designated ACE Client Relationship Manager (when Counsel are invited to join the system), invoice submission can start followed by automatic validation/compliance and approval, reduction and/or rejection by the relevant in-house professional.

Controls are therefore provided through the strategic application of Advocator System®: external suppliers are selected by designated senior executives, fee earner rates are approved, invoices are validated against

the pre-approved fee earner rates, expenses and the client’s billing guidelines.

2. Budgeting

Having a single platform to record the budget and case plan was also valued by ACE.

In the Advocator System®, external counsel are able to submit a Budget and/or Case Plan when asked to do so and then this is retained within the system for future record and audit purposes.

Budgets can be updated as the case progresses with new versions submitted giving both parties (i.e. ACE and External Counsel) an accurate record of the case plan and strategy as it develops.

3. Easy invoice review and approval process, dove-tailing with their Finance and Accounts Payable department

New technology brings opportunity to save money and time and this is certainly true when it comes to Advocator System®’s electronic billing platform.

ACE wanted to make it easy for external counsel to submit invoices and for their in-house lawyers to review and approve them quickly. If LSG could also automatically populate their Accounts Payable Form with the invoice and payment details, further internal business process benefits would be achieved.

LSG’s Advocator System® provides an easy and quick way for electronic invoices to be submitted, reviewed and approved. Invoices can also be forwarded to a more senior manager for authorisation if required.

Regarding the payment process, LSG was also able to automatically populate ACE’s Accounts Payable Form with the necessary data achieving further efficiency.

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4. Financial and MI reporting on budgets and spend by matter/business unit/law firm/lead lawyer/in-house lawyer and many more

ACE recognised the value of managing their external counsel and legal spend on a single platform.

With this, ACE is able to obtain key reports on financial and performance metrics on their internal and external counsel.

The Advocator System® provides reports within the system and LSG also provides a separate Advocator System® Desktop (‘ASD’) which can ‘slice and dice’ and present the data in graphs, tables, pdf and Excel spread-sheets.

ASD® is a powerful reporting tool that generates both ‘high level’ and granular reports. These include, for example, matter/case specific budget vs. actual, fees & expenses, Guideline Non-Compliance, business unit reports, internal executive reports, Top 10 matters and external counsel reports.

Another key feature of ASD® is the ability to produce and send selected reports to selected employees at regular intervals prompting better management and actions as required.

This reporting remains a key driver for the Advocator System® program.

LSG’s Testing, Training and On-boarding:

LSG configured the Advocator System® to meet ACE’s specific needs.

As for all systems, it was tested by LSG’s quality testing team and then by a dedicated team of users before it went ‘live’ in 2006.

LSG also provided face-to-face training for ACE’s in-house legal team and webinar training for the law firms.

These sessions are supported by the Advocator System® on-demand training videos, live-chat, ‘ticket’ and/or phone support.

Result:

Since 2006, ACE’s international corporate legal department has used Advocator System® to assign matters, request budgets and case plans and approve electronic validated invoices.

The multi-currency Advocator System® is used by 160 in-house lawyers, 1750 law firms, and 12,000 lawyers geographically located in the US, UK, Europe, Singapore and Australasia and it has validated more than 55,000 invoices.

Charlie C MorganClient Relations Manager | LSG

Email: ccm@lsg.com, t. +44 (0) 20 7488 3500, t. +1 (212) 269 4520 ext 190, m.+44 (0) 789 439 3800

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