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Why Do GC Fire Firms? Who Knows?
At his blog Law Department Management, Rees Morrison picks up on an interesting statistic from the Association of Corporate Counsel's most recent Chief Legal Officer Survey. Question 4b asked CLOs who fired an outside firm during 2006 to give the primary reason. The survey listed possible grounds such as cost, lack of responsiveness, poor work quality, lack of diversity and lack of expertise. CLOs added other reasons of their own, including personality conflicts, disagreement on strategy and firm consolidations.
Given these various choices, it would seem the survey covered all the bases -- at least the most obvious ones. Yet nearly 63 percent of the CLOs who responded to the survey answered the question with the choice, "Not applicable."
What, if anything, does this tell us about why CLOs fire firms? Morrison suggests this answer:
"It may be that law departments stop using a particular firm not because of any gaffe or malpractice, but because another firm made a more attractive offer of service."
Also noteworthy, he adds, is that no one gave "conflicts of interest" as the reason they fired a firm.
Posted by Robert J. Ambrogi on February 12, 2007 at 06:56 PM | Permalink
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