Law firm attorneys take note:  your general counsel clients are highly dissatisfied. 

Today’s ABA Journal E-report quotes the BTI Consulting Group’s study titled How Clients Hire, Fire and Spend: Landing the World’s Best Clients.  Seventy percent of the 200 corporate counsels surveyed (mostly from Fortune 1000 companies) were unhappy with the performance of their outside counsel–and the general counsels have demoted or fired many of these firms.

The reasons?  Not keeping up with and being responsive to changes in the client’s organization.  Not communicating well enough with the clients.  And, in particular, not communicating to the client the value that the law firm delivered.

The remedy?  Realize that EVERY client communication is a critical client development opportunity.  Law firm lawyers must regularly listen to their clients, act responsively, and let the client know–in ways that the particular client can understand and appreciate–just how responsive the outside lawyer has been, and how much value has been provided.