On August 7, I sat down via WebEx with Joan Davison, the CEO of Hire Counsel and Mestel & Company. Joan and I covered the business of document review and staffing, including how she views the role of CEO, how to use human capital strategies in the legal setting, and how to measure the effectiveness of the staffing solutions being implemented.
Joan has more than twenty years of expertise in operations management as well as business development, marketing, recruiting, and staffing. For fifteen years, Joan was in a leadership position at Staff Management, which did business as Seton Corp., ultimately being named the President as well as the Chief Operating Officer of Staff Management.
Managing through Challenging Times? Focus on the Key Three
Joan explains how she views her role as CEO and the three things she must accomplish each day: (1) focus on the culture; (2) share the vision; and (3) identify the right team.
Bringing It All Together for Customer Experience
Joan discusses how Hire Counsel distinguishes itself from the other document review options by remaining technology agnostic, ensuring that the company is nimble and flexible, and focusing on identifying all available options to ensure a right fit for the case need.
Identifying Opportunities to Leverage Human Capital
Joan talks about how the legal industry can best manage and innovate with human capital strategies, including an example of a GC that was seeking to make the legal department a “profit center.”
In-House Counsel: How to Measure the Effectiveness of Your Staffing Strategy
Joan discusses how to create a “scorecard” to measure the effectiveness of a human capital strategy, including evaluating the cost structure and quality percentages.
Hire Counsel and Mestel & Company are two brands of HCMC Legal that Joan emphasizes are “focusing on human capital.” Hire Counsel provides outsourced legal solutions for managed review, contract attorneys, and temporary legal staffing projects. Mestel & Company performs comprehensive talent scouting for executive-level recruiting and talent placements. Joan reported that the companies have a thirty-year history that spans “all the way from the East coast to the West coast.”
If you have any questions, please feel free to email me at csanko@bakerdonelson.com. I would love to hear from you.
LeanDiscovery: Sitting with the C-Suite is a series of interviews designed to provide in-house legal counsel with a birds-eye view of the eDiscovery marketplace, particularly its various technology and service providers. A key component of great eDiscovery management and execution is having a great supply chain. Sitting with the C-Suite is a forum to hear directly from the C-Suite of various eDiscovery providers about the marketplace history, current and future service offerings, and expectations of things to come. This is not an advertisement or endorsement of any of the speakers, or the companies, services and technology that they represent, by either the interviewer or Baker Donelson. The views expressed are those of the speaker. Baker Donelson’s eDiscovery team seeks to provide the best client value throughout the eDiscovery life cycle. If you have any companies or speakers that you would like to see featured, please feel free to reach out to us at LeanDiscovery@bakerdonelson.com.
