What does an outside firm have to do to get fired by a law department? Make a big mistake? Commit an ethical breach? Diss the CEO? Nothing that radical is required, it turns out. A conference in March hosted by the Georgia chapter of the Association of Corporate Counsel, and held at the offices of Sutherland Asbill & Brennan, revealed just how easy it can be.
Shannon Pierce, a senior counsel at natural gas distributor AGL Resources Inc., recounted an instance in which she felt a firm had overcharged her company. And this was far from a bet-the-company case. In fact, it almost couldn’t have been smaller. Pierce asked a firm to use an associate instead of a $600-an-hour partner to write a memo. But when she got the bill, it was for the partner.
