Certain larger clients have their own supplier onboarding process. We are used to dealing with this, in some cases annually. If your client may have additional requirements, then you should address those without delay. You do not want your retainer to be delayed and, where clients have invoicing setup requirements, you do not want to have payment delayed. If in doubt, it is best to ask the client whether they have any onboarding and invoicing formalities at the outset.
For support with client supplier onboarding requirements, contact Hannah Doherty. She will work with the IT Team regarding IT requirements and the Invoicing Team regarding invoicing requirements. You may find this pack of client supplier due diligence documents useful and you may wish to send this to clients in order to pre-empt any questions or delays.
On occasion, a large client will require Keystone to sign up to their own terms. If so, please send the requested terms to the General Counsel as soon as possible for review, before indicating their acceptance to the client. There may be areas where we cannot accede to the client's terms. In our experience, the most negotiated areas tend to be: conflicts, confidentiality, data protection, limitation of liability, and client indemnities. A typical compromise is to agree some or all of their outside counsel requirements and to say that they take precedence over our own Engagement Letter and then, in addition, to send our own Engagement Letter.
See the sections below about invoicing as to any client supplier invoicing requirements and also note that sometimes in outside counsel terms or supplier forms you will be required to provide our Dunn and Bradstreet Number. If so, our D-U-N-S Number is 733774025.