In-house counsel looking to advance their careers and add value to their companies could learn from those who are positioning themselves as revenue generating profit centres to maintain their appeal following the GFC. After shifting its focus, one corporate legal team at DuPont has produced a $1.5bn recovery over six years – all part of a strategy of maintaining a ‘hard’ value on their companies’ bottom line,  measured by return on investment.

This can involve anything from pursuing claims against utility companies for power outages at factories to unfulfilled warranties, breakdowns or mishaps.
A recent report on this activity by Martindale-Hubbell said that too often these sorts of claims were not pursued by the in-house legal team. Firms with IP in emerging markets would be likely to find that copyright is being infringed or ignored after proper investigation.

Thomas Sager, chief legal officer at DuPont, said that the way to generate revenue is by becoming more involved in the business life-cycle; being more pro-active in monitoring transactions and agreements to find and eliminate wrong doing or mistakes. Sager has had auditors conduct a study on the company’s experience in the preceding few years, which subsequently found that a more disciplined approach to recovery would yield results.

Sager also believes that other corporate legal departments are likely to make similar findings: “Any general counsel who looks into his company’s income streams would probably find, under examination, that it cries out for this sort of process. It’s about establishing a process that is proactive and disciplined, perhaps using paralegals on the investigative dynamics that are needed,” he said.

Some claims may still be outsourced and the main challenge for counsel is to gain support for actively pursuing any wrong that is discovered, according to Sager. Often companies can avoid actively pursuing claims for fear of upsetting relationships with clients, agents or business partners, he added.