Morning Briefing: Law firms are from Mars, GCs are from Venus?

Men think they understand women; women disagree. Law firms say they understand their clients’ needs; do they? A new survey aimed to find out just how closely the needs of external law firms meet those of general counsel. The UK-based General Counsel Exchange asked 125 in-house general counsels, mostly at firms with at least 1000 employees and a turnover of more than AU$2 billion. They also polled 120 of the UK’s top law firms.

To start the survey, participants were asked whether law firms understand their clients’ needs; on a scale of 1 (not very confident) to 5 (very confident) 41 per cent of both law firms and GCs put 4 or 5.

There are greater divisions in some of the other findings; 74 per cent of law firms believe that the buying of legal services are handled by clients’ procurement teams; 80 per cent of GCs are confident that is not the case. On project management skills for law firms 60 per cent of GCs say it’s very important but only 17 per cent of law firm partners felt the same.

On alternative fee arrangements there is also disparity with 76 per cent of law firms saying they believe that clients want to move away from the billable hour while only 58 per cent of GCs say they do.
 
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