Success story with
"Without UpCounsel I would have spent three times as much money, and the legal work would have taken at least twice as long to complete. "
John Moss
FinancialForce General Counsel
FinancialForce develops cloud back-office applications for salesforce CRM. It unifies data across the enterprise in real-time, enabling companies to rapidly evolve their business models with customers at the center. FinancialForce is backed by Salesforce Ventures.
How does FinancialForce benefit by working with UpCounsel?
Why FinancialForce General Counsel John Moss Turned to UpCounsel:
1. Time Saved: UpCounsel spared John the long and labor-intensive of finding an attorney through referrals. John estimates that his UpCounsel attorneys completes projects twice as fast as his old law firm.
2. Access to High-Quality Attorneys: John’s UpCounsel attorney impressed him with her great reviews, industry knowledge and ability to work to his exact specifications.
3. Cost Savings: John says that the project would have cost three times as much had he used a law firm instead of UpCounsel.
The challenge
As the Senior Vice President, General Counsel and only in-house attorney at a global software company with more than 600 employees, John Moss has a lot on his plate. Often, he doesn’t have the bandwidth to handle it all himself.
Granted, a high volume of legal work is par for the course for John. He began his legal career as an associate at global law firm Squire Patton Boggs before moving in-house at Oracle. He spent nearly four years there before landing at Salesforce, where he spent nearly eight years as General Counsel.
Over the course of his decades-long legal career, John sent overflow work to a large law firm. Therefore, when a new project arose at FinancialForce, he considered following the status quo.
He knew that a big law firm could handle his project, which involved analyzing and upgrading certain internal systems so that they aligned with internal regulations and industry best practices. However, he was concerned that the law firm would approach the job by “churning” out work without focusing on results. Additionally, big law firms are expensive and notorious for making projects more complicated than they need to be, adding to the time needed to complete the job.
John also did not want to devote his time and energy to a beauty contest (the law firm version of a tryout) for his job.
John says his UpCounsel attorney produced high-quality, “results-focused” legal work.
John next considered consulting with colleagues within his network to find an attorney, but he knew that avenue to be labor intensive without the guarantee of positive results.
John was looking for an attorney with the below qualifications, and he didn’t want to spend his time and money to find an attorney who fit all of them.
- The type of attorney that John wanted was in high demand, so it would be difficult to find someone reasonably priced and available.
- John’s standards were high. He wanted someone competent and experienced to do the work.
- He was looking for an attorney with enough knowledge of the relevant law to work with modest supervision while remaining attentive to his priorities.
The solution
Fortunately, once John started using UpCounsel, finding the right attorney was easy. UpCounsel sources the perfect attorneys for John’s unique needs. He can then immediately compare the attorney profiles, including their experience, rates and the services they offer, and interview them to easily find and hire one who was the perfect fit for his budget and the job at hand. For John, this was far preferable to spending time and energy searching his network for a referral of unknown quality and availability.
John knew that he had found the right pool of attorneys as soon as he reviewed the proposals he received. He selected his attorney chiefly because of her excellent reviews. She had eight years of experience, including an in-house role at Google, and her industry knowledge meant that she was able to provide expert guidance while working to John’s specifications.
Whereas big law firms would have brought unnecessary complexity and cost to his project, UpCounsel provided results-focused legal services. Had he used a large law firm, John estimates that he would have spent three times as much money and the work would have taken at least twice as long.
Over the course of the job, John says his attorney produced high-quality, “results-focused” legal work. She delivered actionable insights, including key policies, factual discovery, company statements and employee counseling. She was knowledgeable in the field yet very open to working within John’s parameters. She effortlessly balanced what John wanted with what she, as an expert, thought the company needed.
Because of his positive first experience, over the past 3 years, John has returned to UpCounsel whenever he needs staffing for a legal project.