Sitting within Shell's wider legal department, the 90-lawyer litigation team is headed by litigation general counsel Richard Hill. Through the group, Mr Hill has introduced an internal benchmark known as the 'litigation objectives realisation process' (LORP), which is designed to standardise management of Shell's high and low-value litigation across the globe. A key feature of LORP is an early case assessment process. It aims to evaluate likely dispute outcomes and decide whether individual disputes are worth pursuing to trial or should be settled early before legal costs begin to mount.

A smart move

It appears the new strategy has borne fruit, as Shell's litigation caseload has dropped by almost a third since the team was launched in 2012, including a 10 per cent dip in cases year-on-year in 2015 alone. Combined with robust cost-cutting measures, Shell has managed to cull its litigation spend by 20 per cent in just 12 months.

Doing more in-house

According to Mr Hill, cutting Shell's legal spend required maximising the amount that in-house lawyers are able to contribute to managing disputes. Historically, litigation has been Shell's primary source of legal costs, and remains the company's biggest buyer of external legal services. 'We keep a lot of small litigation [in-house] now, and almost all of our international arbitration. Around 20 cases in 2015 saw us go directly to the bar, and not via a firm,' Mr Hill commented in The Lawyer. Ensuring close cooperation between Shell and outside counsel has also been key to maximising value when enlisting outside firms for litigation, Mr Hill added. 'We don't just send [litigation] out to law firms and hope for the best.' Source: The Lawyer