They need to know what is happening in order to advise management on what to expect and how to plan accordingly. Unresponsiveness Examples Informal discussions with corporate counsel across the region revealed that private practitioners are regularly jeopardizing their ties to in-house legal departments or missing opportunities to enhance them. Although in-house lawyers are lobbied actively by firms seeking to forge new relationships or expand ongoing ones, anecdotal evidence suggests that there is much room for improvement even in the best existing engagements. In the interest of being constructive given the nature of the stories shared, information about the sources of the feedback and their clients is not provided. One of the most common examples of disappointing legal service is the failure to adhere to the client's written guidelines for outside counsel.
Guidelines specify the company's expectations as to the terms of engagement.
Despite articulating such guidelines up front, corporate counsel find private counsel rarely adhere to them consistently. This creates difficulties for the corporate counsel, because of his or her accountabilities to company management, and thus engenders ill will towards the outside offender. What follows are additional illustrations of private law firm unresponsiveness to client expectations with the same propensities for putting corporate counsel on the line internally and, in turn, creating a troubling rift in the relationship with the outside legal service provider. Sending eleventh hour drafts for review. The problems are compounded when the draft is incomplete or of mediocre quality.