Three years ago, we plastered the determined faces of four prominent general counsel across alternate covers of this magazine. We asked, "Is It Their Hour?" The legal chiefs in question were champions of alternative fees and, generally, pressuring their outside law firms to change their way of doing business. The context was the previous autumn’s financial meltdown and the resultant recession. It’s painful to remember even four years on, but it was a time when two major automakers were basically nationalized, and many large financial institutions were still in business because they were propped up by the federal government.
At the time, we and many others believed that the economic meltdown would lead to a major upheaval in the relationship between corporate legal departments and their outside law firms. I wrote in my editor’s note, "The current downturn isn’t behaving like normal ones, during which growth heads into reverse gear, but then everyone expects to go back to their old habits afterward. Instead, this year some corporate legal departments are taking the opportunity to make good on previous threats to change how they hire and deploy outside counsel."
