The Challenge
The resourcing gap never closes on its own.
Legal departments face a persistent operational problem: too much work for the permanent team, not enough budget for full-time hires, and often the wrong skills mix for the transformation already underway. External firms come in, give recommendations, and leave. Internal hires take months to onboard before they can contribute meaningfully.
The gap between where you are and where you need to be does not close with advice. It closes with operational leadership, experienced people who show up, run the function, and deliver against your objectives without requiring constant direction.
Where the resourcing model breaks down
Permanent team overwhelmed by volume, no capacity to run transformation alongside business-as-usual
Full-time hires budgeted but not approved, or approved but not yet onboarded
Skills gap in program management, vendor oversight, or technology operations
Advisory firms deliver recommendations, then leave the legal team to implement alone
Continuous operational coverage needed, not just project-based engagements that create dependency then disappear
Services Offered
Each engagement begins with the service
that matches your immediate need.
Many clients begin with one service and add others as the relationship deepens. Each service below is available as a standalone engagement or as part of a broader managed services program.
01
Managed Bill Review
Systematic review and validation of outside counsel invoices against billing guidelines, agreed rates, and matter scope. Reduces outside counsel costs without replacing your panel or disrupting existing relationships.
02
PMaaS: Program Management as a Service
Senior program management embedded in your legal department on an ongoing basis, delivering structure, governance, and accountability without the overhead of a permanent hire.
03
Contract Operations
Ongoing management of your contract function: intake, routing, negotiation support, execution tracking, and obligation management. Keeps the contract pipeline moving without burdening your core legal team.
04
Legal RFP Execution
End-to-end management of outside counsel panel reviews and matter-specific RFPs, from brief development and vendor outreach through evaluation, scoring, and selection.
05
Vendor Management
Ongoing management of outside counsel and legal technology vendor relationships, including performance reviews, rate negotiations, panel maintenance, and guideline enforcement.
06
Third-Party Risk Management
Ongoing TPRM oversight for legal, procurement, and compliance programs, maintaining vendor risk assessments, due diligence workflows, and regulatory documentation at scale.
07
Ongoing Matter Management Support
Day-to-day matter tracking, status reporting, and data hygiene within your ELM system, keeping your matter management platform accurate and your team focused on legal work, not system administration.
08
Reporting & Analytics
BI dashboards and spend analytics designed, built, and maintained by Hafid Karama, Swiftwater's Business Intelligence Lead, turning your legal system data into decisions rather than noise.
09
IP Renewal Execution
Ongoing management and execution of IP portfolio renewal obligations across EMEA, Americas, and APAC, ensuring no renewal is missed and your IP assets remain protected.
The Swiftwater Difference
We don’t advise and leave. We run it.
Most external support models give you recommendations and exit. Your internal team is then left to implement them, with the same constraints that made external support necessary in the first place. The recommendations are often sound. The execution gap is where value gets lost.
Jeannine Puello ran legal operations from inside AT&T and Verizon, two of America’s most operationally complex enterprise environments. She has built and run the function, not just consulted on it. That operational credibility is what Swiftwater’s managed services clients get: people who have held the accountability, not just analysed it from the outside.
Engagement Models
Full Managed
Swiftwater operates the legal ops function end-to-end. Your team focuses on legal work. We handle the operational infrastructure.
Co-Managed
We integrate with your existing team, filling capability gaps, running specific workstreams, and providing senior oversight where you need it most.
Project-Based
Defined-scope engagements for specific operational needs: RFP execution, vendor program setup, contract operations launch, or PMaaS for a transformation initiative.
Understanding the Models
How Swiftwater compares to staffing providers and ALSPs
Most GCs and Legal Ops leaders have worked with staffing providers or alternative legal service providers at some point. Each model has a place. Here is how to know which one fits your situation.
The Practice Team
People who have run it ,
not just advised on it.
Every practitioner in Swiftwater’s Managed Services practice has operated in-house, not only consulted to one. That experience shapes how they work, and why clients keep them.
