Calling out shameless law firms.

CEO and Board Members are furious about the fees charged by Law Firms. Most Indian firms (so called Tier 1) overcharges and underperforms. Not giving any names. Most have overcharged and overbilled without even a simple justification when asked during payment negotiations. Firms are so shameless. Partners act unaware.

So says the GC, who will ask for additional resources to be put on the matter on an immediate basis. So says the GC who will want people to work on weekends and holidays, for work which can be done later. So says the GC who will want everything to be done by a law firm, starting from the most basic and regular board resolutions, just so that he/ she can cover his backside and will not care about company's expense then. So says the GC who will negotiate a piddly hourly rate and a discount as well, only to later complain about billing just to get more discount. Looks like this GC is out grocery shopping.

My friend, it's good for you to get off your high horse and for once, do some basic tasks in-house, to show to your Board how you saved costs (instead of blaming law firms).

So when it comes to deliverables. . Clients want to come first but when it comes to paying for work done ...the don't want to. ..come at all??

Sadda doggy ...doggy
Twadda doggy Tommy??

Shame on those inhouse counsels who get the work done on a dime turn but then diddle daddle when it comes to paying .... You know who you are. .... Sharam karo!!

Great thought! But I feel the Law firms don't have the requisite cojones to do this. Given the normative undercutting and glut of dime-a-dozen-tier-1-trained break-away partners and their little law firms (boutique as they like to be called), these hotshot partners would eagerly pirouette in a leotard like an eight-year-old before a GC at a whiff of possible onboarding. So to all the law-firm stans out there ..relax.

For fees quoted by these firms, I find them in the habitual practice of over-promising and under-delivering. They always come up with excuses to justify their failure to deliver within the agreed timeline.

I often come across the first cuts of the draft which on the face of it are riddled with errors (typo as well as conceptual) as a result of which I end up spending half a day doing a page turn with the external lawyers, which could have been easily avoided only if someone in their team bothered to have a re-look before sharing the drafts.
What I do not understand is lawyers use market practice as a justification for their ill-thought-out and under-researched advice. When I questioned a lawyer for blatantly questionable advice on the applicable stamp duty for our transaction, I was given a list of ‘so-and-so’ of the market who in past have happily taken such views on applicable law.
Dealing with the dispute partners is a different ball game altogether. For them, everything borders on the principle of uncertainty and “you know how Indian courts behave sometimes” advice. As a GC, try explaining these to your investors or your board.
I think there is an inherent quality issue in the legal practice irrespective of the big names involved.
"Allthatglistersisnotgold;
Oftenhaveyouheardthattold...."

Beta, most GCs I have seen r glorified paper weights who are dyspatched by der promoters 2 hound my kids to giv dem der wrk on tym. Many tyms d GC will sit in my reception lyk a peon bcuz he knows in my office at least he will get some nashta & chai & some decent treatment. If he shows his face 2 his promoter, he vl get jhaapd n thrashed bcuz said GC is usually incompetent. Suggest u feel grateful dat the law firm partner is entertaining u.... i hope u kno dat ur promoter will be regularly directly interacting wit d law firm partner & askin him 4 his opinion of u.

Law firms promotersand partners are present generations selfgrandizing buffoons of a bygone era who dont sbir realise they are as dispensable as tissues.The company won't fire the GC but quietly pick up another law firm.The senior counsels are available through many a law firm.

Yep.

Once I prepared an invoice and gave the hours consumed.

Partner outrightly told me to increase the hours by two or three times.

I did.

The Client paid.

The reality is that these law firms are stuck in a time-warp. They used to charge such inflated bills for consuming a good number of hours in the pre-internet era. However, the internet era generation needs lesser time (almost by 50%) to find out about things.

So we get things done quickly and cheaply - something the older generation is not used to.

Now their client-relations have been going on from 90s since when their bills would have made sense. They look inflated only to the present generation who is benefiting from a lot of advantages of access to faster and comprehensive information.

However, the leading law firms are not realizing this and they are stuck in their own zone.

Either they wake up and stop over-charging than what makes sense in today's time. Clients shouldn't be paying the bill for their old habits and anachronistic working styles. Else you know a new buster scruggs is out on the horizon hunting for their clients.

This is hilarious, because all the problems you've listed are on your end?? Don't engage a Tier 1 firm if your budget doesn't allow for it. Every EL is signed ahead of time with an appended list of hourly rates and a blended rate. If you got overcharged / overbilled it's because you didn't communicate your expectations and budget properly. If your CEO and Board are furious at you, that's super embarrassing for you because it means you didn't do your ONE job right. As GC you're supposed to have strict oversight over what you're offloading to external counsel, staying within budget and communicating timelines, performance indicators and financial limits to law firms. When I was in-house, my GC would reach out to the billing partner's team for a fee estimate for work done, establish an INR cap on the total billed amount and request that we be intimated upon anticipation of breach. We also moved a lot of work in-house to rein in costs and streamline the process. As part of the legal department's report to the Board, external counsel fee is always discussed in advance and strategy roadmaps are laid out to minimize costs. Essentially you're a terrible GC. ▮▮▮

Perhaps you are not aware that a GC and in house team does way more work and very diversified work that the "ONE job" you have written about. Just so that you know in-house teams do not outsource more than 20% of their work. The reasons for outsourcing in decreasing order of priority are as follows:

1. Lack of in-house resources due to size and speed of a transaction.
2. Requirement of an external opinion to buttress view of the in-house team.
3. Requirement of an external opinion by a counter-party.
4. Litigation matters where an external counsel is required for arguments. (note: many in house teams prepare their own plaints etc. and there is need to hire external counsel as in-house counsels cannot argue in courts due to Advocates Act and BCI Rules).
5. Expert advise on a matter where in-house team does not have expertise.

I believe that frustration of the author is from the fact that many law firms (including several tier 1 law firms) claim expertise on certain matters but when it comes to delivery it turns out they have no idea. Their expertise was based on an individual who has long moved on from the firm, or some deal/ due diligence they did a while back where they came across a similar issue. This is frankly a rampant and unfortunate practice.

Frustration might also be coming from the fact that hourly rates of T-1 Indian law firms are not very far from Magic Circle law firms, and the quality is no where close. Also in many cases it is unfair to pass on costs of learning onto a client as a law firm had claimed to be an expert on a topic and then tries to charge 100s of hours in research time as they realised they had no idea what they were upto.

"Frustration might also be coming from the fact that hourly rates of T-1 Indian law firms are not very far from Magic Circle law firms, and the quality is no where close." - Really? Which Indian T-1 and Magic Circle are you comparing? Magic Circle partner rates currently sit between £1000-£1500 - a Trainee is charged at more than most Indian T1 MA/PA. Typical Indian T-1 partner rates (rarely achieved) would be around £250 to £500 max.

Thanks for honestly spelling this out. I'm an advisor and I completely agree with the above. Hopefully the guys making the comments about how great they are and how great is there work will see the light. The another issue of OP, which was complete inability to justify the hours is completely ignored, which I know is a big issue.

I am not from legal department,more towards compliance department. But every interaction had with the law firm especially disputes team only reveals that law firms are capable of no great competence on legal or complianceaspects, they dont know the law properly at all,they are just overcharging and passing on the heavy lifting of the case to a bunch of untrained juniors and then rely on counsels to argue the case in Court.This is liking hoping for a miracle.There is one law firm in particular that is so incompetent that now thay have made it mandatory that a senior counsel will have to be hired by the client because their partners and an entire big team of useless lawyers are incapable of arguing in Court.I have seen this firm for almost 8 years now and all the good smart law-savvy partners and juniors have left and this firm literally survives on fresher and intern recruits doing the work.My company GC has quietly been shopping around to replace this law firm being exhausted by their antics and found one.The problem is this law firm been preferred by our company for more than 15 years.Still let's see what final decision by management

Oh, when faced with a GC who made a similar complain about their existing inventory registration budget and asked us about the costs, we clearly told them that we could do it at half the cost. But you know the reply we got?... "The promoters wouldn't agree at that low a cost cz 'there's a kickback involved'"
As for Gurgaon courts...don't even get me started. I have seen clients ask lawyers to return their appearance fee because "matter got adjourned", and "aaj to kuchh hua hi nahi fees kis baat ki", when the lawyer (who we happened to know) had spent 2 whole nights preparing their last-minute bail matter and a lot more. So Counsel Venting: Calling out all Shameless clients who want to get work done for free.