A recent survey reveals a yawning chasm in the way general counsel and law firm lawyers see their professional relationship. Amy Stickel explains the figures

When registering for classes, did you enrol in courses taught by taskmasters, or in those led by professors who were easier with their ‘As’?
In the 12th annual Corporate Legal Times & Andersen Legal Survey of General Counsel, general counsel are almost like everyone’s favourite professor: generous to themselves, their departments and their outside counsel. Law firm lawyers, on the other hand, grade their clients like those professors who make it a point of pride to never, ever hand out ‘As’.
For example, when asked to rate their clients’ legal departments on a variety of attributes, law firm lawyers handed out grades that averaged mostly in the B- to C+ range, with one lone A- (in the category of offering effective and creative preventive legal advice). When asked to rate their outside counsel on the same attributes, general counsel were much more generous, offering mostly A- and B+ grades.
Law firm lawyers, however, are not uniformly tough graders: in self-evaluations, their grades are much higher – similar, in fact, to the grades general counsel awarded their law firm lawyers.
This is a familiar theme for this survey. It compares the perceptions and expectations of both general counsel and law firm lawyers in the US, and has for years presented a huge dichotomy in the world views of lawyers in private practice and lawyers working in-house. For example, 60% of the general counsel surveyed believe that they and their legal departments do an excellent job of understanding the importance and balance of cost and quality, and another 29.2% say that they do a good job. But 9.5%of law firm lawyers think their clients’ law departments do an excellent job in that category, and another 9.5% say their clients have a poor understanding of the importance and balance of cost and quality.
And when asked if the cost of legal services is commensurate with the value of the service, 34.4% of general counsel say they do an excellent job of managing that issue – yet only 15% of law firm lawyers agree that their clients do an excellent job.
Like some of those annoying couples everyone knows, general counsel and law firm lawyers also have very different ideas about their relationships.
More than half of the general counsel surveyed (51.5%) believe that their legal departments do an excellent job of relating to law firm personnel, and another 35.3% say their departments do a good job.
Yet again, the law firms disagree – only 23.8% of private practice lawyers say that their clients’ law departments do an excellent job, and 5.1% say they do a good job.