In-house legal teams manage outside counsel relationships with a combination of inherited billing guidelines, a spreadsheet tracking which firms handle which work, and the institutional memory of whoever has been there longest. The methodology exists — it's just not written down anywhere useful.
This plugin encodes how experienced legal operations managers actually run outside counsel programmes. Not billing templates or vendor evaluation checklists — the judgment calls underneath them. When an outside counsel guideline should be collaborative rather than directive. When a right-sourcing conversation is actually a relationship conversation. When a scope dispute is a fee arrangement failure. When a panel review recommendation needs an improvement plan before it can become an exit.
8 skills cover the full OCM lifecycle as a connected system. Skill 1 establishes billing rules. Skill 2 designs the panel structure. Skill 3 runs firm selection. Skill 4 structures fees. Skill 5 instructs firms and closes onboarding gates. Skill 6 reviews invoices against the guidelines from Skill 1. Skill 7 measures performance. Skill 8 reviews the panel and feeds back into Skills 2 or 3 for the next cycle. Each skill's output is the next skill's input — but any team can enter at any point depending on where they are.
Every mode produces two layers of output: an operational document the user actually runs the process with, and a decision-maker summary for the GC or leadership team. The user needs the tool and the internal case for using it. Output is calibrated to team maturity — Early, Intermediate, or Advanced — because handing a 15-component comprehensive OCG to a team that has never had billing guidelines is how you get billing guidelines that nobody follows.
Built by an experienced legal operations consultant through iterative testing against realistic OCM scenarios. v1 — feedback welcome, particularly the "this doesn't work because..." kind.