Another factor affecting how this spend is managed is that the seller (law firm partner) takes a job in-house and becomes the buyer. In-house lawyers are essentially engaging law firms in the same manner in which they used to be engaged when they were at a firm.
We need to remember that those in-house attorneys (and therefore legal service buyers) started in a law firm and are used to providing service and billing for it in a particular way. That’s what they were taught. It might not have been detailed training, but somehow they acquired knowledge at a firm on how to bill and how to review timesheets, how to edit inputs and entries of time, and how to eventually communicate with the client on a discrepancy in a bill or a question about a bill. So for those who transitioned from law firm practice to in-house, they are receiving or buying the service, or reviewing the bill through the same lens they had when they left the firm.
There is typically no training on this after the transition in-house. Somehow, these lawyers are expected to know how to buy from law firms and review the value of what they received. There’s no guidance on the appropriate ways to push back or ask questions. Most in-house lawyers are not comfortable providing critical feedback to firms they came from or have long relationships with. These can be very uncomfortable conversations; again, the transition from a law firm to in-house doesn’t magically create a different perspective on the billing process or expectations of value.
