Best Practices in Management of Outside Counsel

Eugene Defelice, Vice President, General Counsel & Secretary, Barnes & Noble, Inc.

The changing dynamic between inside and outside legal counsel has resulted in a dramatic change in the nature of legal practice. Inside legal counsel is subjected to financial and time pressures in unprecedented ways. At the same time, inside counsel has undertaken a significantly greater role in performing substantive legal work, enabled by increasingly sophisticated in-house staffs, often hired with advanced technical degrees, masters in business administration, or major law firm experience. Finally, in-house counsel now has bargaining power in the terms of retention of outside counsel. For their part, while some law firms are experiencing robust profitability, they are under pressures of their own. These pressures result from a highly competitive environment, client demands and high cost structures. Competition to provide legal services comes not only from a wide range of law firms in major metropolitan areas and regional firms of high quality. Law firms are under pressure to differentiate themselves not only in terms of quality, but also in terms of efficiency, cost and business understanding.

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USA Management Publishing April 2013 Vol. 6, No. 23, Spring 2013

Eugene Defelice

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Gene DeFelice is the Vice President, General Counsel & Corporate Secretary, of Barnes & Noble, Inc. He is responsible for all legal matters regarding Barnes & Noble, Inc. and its subsidiaries, including management of outside counsel. Mr. DeFelice is an experienced General Counsel with a wealth of experience in a range of areas, including legal, business management and commercial with full P&L responsibility, international, and board service. Mr. DeFelice graduated from Rutgers University, received his J.D. degree from Seton Hall University and a Masters of Business Administration with distinction from Webster University in Geneva, Switzerland.

Barnes & Noble, Inc.

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Barnes & Noble, Inc. (NYSE:BKS) is a Fortune 500 company and a retail, technology, digital content, and education leader. Its retail business operates 689 Barnes & Noble bookstores in 50 states, and one of the Web’s largest e-commerce sites, BN.com ( www.bn.com ). Its NOOK Media business is a leader in the emerging worldwide digital reading and digital education markets, and also operates 674 college bookstores serving over 4.6 million students and faculty members at colleges and universities. The opinions expressed in this article are those of Mr. DeFelice and not Barnes & Noble, Inc. or NOOK Media.

USA Management Publishing April 2013 Vol. 6, No. 23, Spring 2013