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Shahzad offers more than 20 years of experience in Legal and Financial Consulting Services. Prior to joining Huron Consulting Group Shahzad was a consulting partner at Arthur Andersen LLP. Shahzad assists law firms and law departments improve their business performance by providing strategic consulting process improvement and technology-related solutions. His experience includes developing legal e-business strategies performing functional and departmental reviews legal department structuring benchmarking performance measurement lawyer utilization streamlining processes matter management and law firm and legal department systems planning and implementation.
Professional Experience
Consulting Highlights
As a business advisor he consults with General Counsel and Law Firm Managing Partners to better manage their business relating to strategic planning process design and technology implementation resulting in reduced cost efficient operations and more effective client services.
Worked with the legal department of a large multi-national company to perform an assessment of all resources both internally and externally relating to matter management document management and discovery management then implemented new systems and processes at this. As a result the client anticipates a 15% reduction in internal and external matter spending.
Worked with a leading 700+ law firm to conduct an internal review of its litigation support function and to provide management consulting. Assisted in design of enhanced discovery management procedures and further advised the firm on its technical platform improving the performance and direction of discovery management by the firm's attorneys.
Assisted a major oil company's legal department in reviewing and aligning its method of legal services delivery with the company's business strategy leading to value-added cost-effective services being provided by the transformed virtual legal department. This involved a three-year transformation program for the legal department involving implementing new businesses processes and technology in a restructured legal function involving outside and in-house counsel.
Consulted with the Managing Partner of a 300+ attorney law firm to review their IT Finance and Support infrastructure leading to value-added recommendations. The current implementation is viewed as revenue improvement change not just cost reduction.
Implemented a matter management system and a document management system housed within the Legal Department firewall but used by in-house and outside counsel for real time updates.
Assisted several legal departments on matter management systems including a 250-user department and an outsourced legal department. Engagements involved remapping and redesigning processes and procedures as well as implementing a new matter management system.
Provided assistance to a 300-attorney firm regarding document management services on a major multi-jurisdiction matter. The project involved approximately two million pages and a wide range of systems-related services to the firm's MIS and litigation support group including network support and workgroup knowledge sharing.
Assisted a major energy company on a large multi-location multi-firm case involving a one million-page database being stored and remotely accessed by a large number of law firms and the company's legal department via a shared electronic repository.
Assisted several legal departments in performing exposure analysis through document sweeps resulting in databases of several million pages. Two most notable engagements were for legal departments of a chemical company and a petroleum company.
Education & Certifications
Bachelor of Arts Accounting England
Chartered Accountant Institute of Chartered Accountants England and Wales
Professional Associations
Member of Board of Directors for the Texas General Counsel Forum
Speaking Engagements
Spoke at a number of conferences including the Association of Systems Management Microsoft's CD-ROM Conference ABA Tech Shows Corporate Legal Times SuperConference 2001 Law Office 2001 and the CD-ROM Exposition.
Publications
Articles in Austin and Houston Business Journals. | 