Ow!!
We hear that many of the big firms are cutting budgets on things like marketing and all those things that partners don’t think important when planning they are too busy thinking about a a new car purchase, kitchen or holiday in St Kitts & Nevis.
They may have to re-assess after reading this and start spending some proper money on training themselves and lawyers not to be such assholes when speaking to in house counsel.
This is the last call for The RollOnFriday In-House Lawyer Survey 2024 survey. So far, respondents have been opining on billing, diversity, wfh, knackered associates, and the best and the worst service.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, brash lawyers are getting some stick. One in-house lawyer in funds lambasted a firm for its “rude, arrogant lawyers who act like they know your business/ industry better than you”.
They added that “being patronised as an experienced in house lawyer is so unnecessary and puts you off using a firm again”.
Another respondent said a US firm had an “arrogant attitude”, along with “very poor quality work.” The client commented: “I constantly have to double check all their work and basically proof read even the simplest documents, which is galling when you’re paying through the roof and you know the trainees earn more than you.”
A government in-house lawyer said they experienced “micro-aggression” from lawyers at a national firm. “It is not a firm that I would instruct again. They have a lot to learn and their staff often appear to be arrogant”. Another respondent said of the same firm: “the UK has more chance of winning Eurovision, than we have at getting a response to emails”.
Meanwhile, the most innovative use of invoicing goes to the firm that “declined to work on an item they had previously advised on, despite our willingness to pay”, said a client. “They directed us to a different type of firm. The next bill included a line item for the email declining the work. This is a great way to lose clients.”
Another bugbear was firms that provided poor customer service. An in-house lawyer in technology, said they had to “repeatedly” chase a firm for updates, and the firm “didn’t answer direct questions asked of them, managed to mess up the signing process which unsurprisingly pissed off our CEO/founder and were frankly verging on incompetent”. And the cherry on top was that it took “two months to get them to invoice in accordance with our (pretty standard) billing guidelines.”
One in-house lawyer slammed a firm for “shockingly” reusing advice “they’d previously given us and neglecting to replace the external customer name”, adding, “at least Dick Turpin did it wearing a mask”.
A GC in energy said they gave a Magic Circle firm a “7-figure instruction that went over two times that amount” but didn’t get “a word of thanks to date”. Noting, “I still see them ecstatically flogging the deal awards they got from that instruction from time to time on LinkedIn”.
If you’re in-house, please do complete the survey below.
