Anyone in the legal/ corporate world hire outside analysis or investigation firms? What do you look for when evaluating these types of engagements? Are there specific subjects or circumstances that lead you to seek outside support? Deal types or structures that you prefer?

A colleague and I recently decided to go into business for ourselves. It's been a great opportunity to perform interesting, meaningful work based on our experience conducting complex investigations in a wide variety of fields. We have provided analysis and litigation support for multibillion dollar mult-district litigation, conducted counter party due dilligence for corporate clients, supported global money laundering and asset recovery investigations, and recently helped a Texas client obtain a $70 million alter ego ruling against a large Chinese state-owned enterprise.

I'm really interested in learning more about how companies and law firms think about these decisions; and I thought, who better to ask than successful Ags who have experience with these matters?

As we look to continue to build our business, I want to ensure that we're delivering real value by asking (and answering) the questions that make a real difference for our clients. If any of you have thoughts, suggestions, experiences with these types of engagements (good or bad), etc., I'd love to hear about them!

Sounds fascinating! If you're in the DFW area and need some more help, I'm looking for a position. Send me a note, orton1227@gmail.com

Can you post your email, I'd like to chat. Our boutique firm in Houston handles similar matters

El Duke said:

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Can you post your email, I'd like to chat. Our boutique firm in Houston handles similar matters

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Send me a PM

I have been doing this work at Big 4 for 12 years. It's a great gig mostly firefighting but as you develop your clients you can develop more proactive work. It's all relationship building, while a lot of contracts still go through procurement, they are often expedited because of the need.

I would say that price generally gets people in the door, then delivery keeps your client happy. We aren't as competitive on price, but we deliver quality results and we can do the same job with local resources in just about any country on the globe. We find our clients prefer fixed fee or unitized fee structures that are built into preferred provider agreements. We often miss because of price only to catch the engagement the second time when the cheaper guy screws it up.

Keeper of The Spirits said:

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I would say that price generally gets people in the door, then delivery keeps your client happy. We aren't as competitive on price, but we deliver quality results and we can do the same job with local resources in just about any country on the globe. We find our clients prefer fixed fee or unitized fee structures that are built into preferred provider agreements. We often miss because of price only to catch the engagement the second time when the cheaper guy screws it up.

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Thanks for the reply. This is definitely helpful context. We are trying to shift our clients' focus to a more proactive approach, as you put it. To continue your analogy, we look for ways to avoid or at least mitigate issues before they become real fires. But as you pointed out, clients tend to get hung up on price at the outset. We are very confident in our ability to deliver, and usually leverage initial success into expanded business. The challenge has been to convince clients that it's better for everyone to engage early before difficulties (and client costs) increase.

Do you work with government clients? Commercial? Both?

We work for both and have found better responses in the last few years for proactive work, but when the economy sinks or the financials are of these types of projects slow. We however see an uptick in investigations because of the pressure to commit fraud is higher. The proactive work is great, I prefer it but margins are usually thinner.