One
of
the
most
innovative
general
counsel
ever,
Jeffrey
Carr
describes
his
career
as
decades
spent
on
the
radical
fringe
of
reforming
legal
services
delivery.
Yet
many
of
his
ideas
for
revamping
legal
departments,
once
viewed
as
radical,
have
now
become
mainstream.
As
general
counsel
at
FMC
Technologies
in
the
early
2000s,
Carr
disrupted
how
legal
departments
hire
and
compensate
outside
counsel,
creating
models
that
today
are
considered
standard
operating
procedure
at
many
companies.
After
retiring
from
FMC
in
2014,
he
went
on
to
work
with
Valorem
Law,
one
of
the
earliest
law
firms
to
focus
on
making
alternative
fee
arrangements
the
norm.
Valorem
became
the
progenitor
of
ElevateNext,
the
law
firm
affiliate
of
the
global
law
company
Elevate.
Carr
returned
to
a
GC
role
in
2019
at
Univar
Solutions,
where
he
sought
to
build
the
law
department
of
the
future.
Now
retired,
he
teaches,
writes,
and
pursues
his
hobby
of
driving
race
cars.
In
this
first
of
a
two-part
interview,
Carr
joins
me
to
talk
about
how
he
landed
on
the
“radical
fringe”
of
reforming
legal
services
and
to
discuss
some
of
the
initiatives
he
created
at
FMC,
including
the
Alliance
Counsel
Engagement
System,
or
ACES,
a
method
of
hiring
outside
counsel
so
unique
that
he
was
encouraged
to
patent
it.
We
also
discuss
Carr’s
recent
post
on
the
Legal
Evolution
blog,
Four
Waves
of
Change
in
#LawLand,
in
which
he
lays
out
his
framework
for
making
the
legal
system
better.
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