WHAT ARE THE INFORMATION NEEDS OF IN-HOUSE LAWYERS? DO THEY DIFFER FROM LAWYERS IN LAW FIRMS?

This will depend on the role of the particular lawyer. This article describes the Legal Department at Shell which has about 700 lawyers in 45 countries. This makes it substantially larger than most in-house legal departments and so comments about roles may not be true elsewhere. Some of our lawyers do specialised work only but many of them have a relatively broad remit.

Information needs for specialist work will be similar to those in law firms. For example, we would need to support lawyers looking after the real estate that Shell owns in the UK with similar resources to property lawyers in law firms, for example, Woodfall, Law of Landlord and Tenant.

However, where our lawyers are supporting a particular business, for example in retail, chemicals or exploration, their information needs are slightly different; in particular, their work may be across a number of jurisdictions. For example, the retail business may decide it wants to investigate a franchising model and the retail lawyers will be responsible for working on the legal aspects of achieving this at a country level. They cannot be knowledgeable of the law in all these countries so their role will often involve asking the right questions of local lawyers (either Shell local lawyers or external counsel) to ensure that all legal considerations are taken into account. Useful resources for these lawyers are cross border materials such as the ‘Global Guides on Practical Law’ and ‘Getting the Deal Through’. There is often less black letter law and, as a result, services like Westlaw or LexisLibrary may be relatively less used by these lawyers.

BREAKDOWN OF ENQUIRIES

Enquiries to the Shell Library Service broadly fall into three fairly equal categories.

The first category are queries relating to Shell or Shell Legal. This might include questions about:

• • the location and expertise of our own lawyers in Shell.

• • the external law firms we use – particularly how to contact the free advice lines, whether we have panels in particular countries.

• • locating Shell policies or procedures.

• • whether we have a Shell precedent for a particular type of agreement.

In practice the first two types are relatively easy to answer while the last two may be more challenging often involving the need to find relevant people to speak to at Shell. This can be challenging as we are in a constant state of evolution and Shell is a large networked company.

The second category are queries about the information resources we have in-house and making best use of them. These are similar to the kind of requests received in law firms.

The final category consists of legal information/research type queries. In my experience there are many more queries relating to international law compared to a UK law firm.

As Shell is the client, our lawyers do not have to find new clients or win pitches so we do not get the same level of business intelligence queries as would be the case in a law firm.

Company information requests are rare. Much of the time lawyers are dealing with companies or joint ventures within the Shell Group and a mini ‘Companies House’ type database provides them with the information they need. When dealing with external companies there is a dedicated Business Integrity Department within Shell which will do all screening research.

WHY PROVIDE AN INFORMATION SERVICE JOINTLY WITH LAW FIRMS?

There were various factors which led to working jointly with law firms.

Miriam Davies at Norton Rose Fulbright was originally very proactive about getting in touch and offering the services of her London librarians to help the UK Shell service. This had worked so well it made sense to build on it and extend internationally using more law firms.

No one librarian could hope to have all the expertise or access to information in house that is needed to cover all the jurisdictions where Shell has lawyers, especially as today's world is constantly changing. While our research skills make us good at finding information, I wanted our lawyers to be able to call on people with expertise in their jurisdictions.

Figure 1. Breakdown of enquiries.

Finally, outside our main hubs (in the UK, US and in the Netherlands) our lawyers have access to relatively fewer information resources.

ADDED VALUE AND ITS IMPORTANCE IN THE CLIENT-LAW FIRM RELATIONSHIP

Shell works with a small panel of law firms. One of the main aims of a small panel is to forge a closer relationship with our panel firms whereby we invest time in helping them understand our business and the particular challenges that we face both in the business and as a legal department supporting the business. In return, the panel firms are able to provide us with more focused advice provided in a more efficient manner. We also hoped to improve the arrangements we have with law firms relating to ‘value added services’. These could include, for example, secondees from law firms, a free advice line for small matters, and targeted training on topics of particular interest. The value added services are obviously beneficial to Shell, but they can also benefit the law firms by deepening their understanding of the business and helping them to build in-house contacts. The smaller panel makes it possible for Shell and the firms to take advantage of the value added services in a structured way that delivers mutual benefits and opportunities.

For Shell, the first priority in selecting the law firms to be on its panel was the demonstrated high quality legal advice that they could be relied upon to deliver. However, there are a very high number of law firms that meet that standard, so the interest and willingness to work with Shell to deliver on value added services can become a real differentiator between otherwise equally positioned firms. While assisting with a library/information service is only one of many considerations in selecting a firm for a panel, it is evidence of a firm's willingness to engage with us and it is seen as another indicator of a firm we may be able to develop a deeper relationship with that goes beyond the traditional firm/client relationship.

SETTING UP THE SERVICE

When planning the set up of the new collaboration service, which is called the Global Information Service, there were two particular requirements that were important to Shell.

Firstly, tapping into the expertise of librarians working in different countries to provide the necessary expertise.

Secondly, the added value for Shell is that the library contacts are to be the gateway into the firms for any information requests our lawyers might have. Librarians might not always be the right people to answer a particular question but if they would help to ensure that question reached the right person, that would be invaluable to us. Clients, like Shell, do not always know where the role of a librarian ends and a professional support lawyer begins, or where the law firm's business development team might be able to help, and nor do they want to. They just want one place to ask for information. The added value for panel firms is that the queries give law firms insight into what is relevant to a business like Shell.

Preparations began with the Shell Relationship Partner at each law firm appointing a representative to liaise with, these were generally the library/information manager.

We had an initial face to face meeting to meet each other, set the scene and explain the background and Shell's requirements.

Law firms then went away to discuss between themselves and come up with the best and most practical way to meet our requirements.

There were understandably reservations from some firms about the amount of work likely to be involved. However, with the division of work and the nature of in-house queries, they are discovering this is not as burdensome as they perhaps anticipated.

The other big task was dividing up the countries between the firms where we wanted coverage. This was largely based on where firms had librarians or professional support lawyers and there was great collaboration between the firms over this. Throughout there was a real desire to help, a willingness to work together and a growing understanding of our needs.

HOW IT WORKS IN PRACTICE?

There is a web page on Shell Legal's intranet called Global Information Service which explains everything to the lawyers. The nub of it comes down to a list of countries together with relevant contacts.

The lawyers use a contact dependent on the jurisdiction they are interested in, so, for example, if their query relates to Canadian law it will tell them the law firm and email address they should use for their query. We have over 100 countries listed and, at the top, are the legal systems thought likely to generate most queries; the UK, US, Netherlands, Canada, Australia, EU and international.

The lawyers are asked to copy in the Shell legal library service when making a query and all replies are also copied in to the service. This is partly to enable us to learn more about our lawyers’ needs and also to ensure they are aware of and using the resources we have in-house. We use this information to develop services most appropriately, provide relevant training etc. For example, the service has helped us to identify requirements for a new subscription service.

HOW IS IT BEING USED?

Obviously with a new service there is a need for a great deal of promotion to ensure people are aware of it. There have been numerous virtual and some in person presentations to promote the service and ensure we reach out to as many of our 700 lawyers as possible. There is generally a good level of interest in the service and it does seem to be fulfilling a need. One area we have to work on is helping the lawyers understand the scope of the service, for example, explaining the difference between library/information research and true legal research. This is particularly key as so many of our lawyers have not been used to having any sort of library/information service before so are unaware of how librarians can assist.

Figure 2. Shell offices using the service.

As the message spreads there has been a gradual increase in the use of the service and queries have been dealt with which we would not have been able to deal with in-house previously.

The aim to make the service more global is taking time as can be seen from the chart below. The service previously was only UK and this is still where the bulk of the enquiries are but we are pleased to see other countries beginning to make use of the service.

KEY TAKE AWAY MESSAGES

As was made clear from feedback received when promoting the service, law firm librarians are highly valued for their professional approach and skills. They should therefore not underestimate their importance in the client relationship. Hopefully, this article illustrates how key added value is in the selection and retention of law firms and this is a real example of how librarians can bring value to their firms’ clients. From the client perspective it is seen as an incredibly positive value add and yet, at the same time, it has proved to be much less onerous than might have been anticipated.