Pharmaceuticals giant Pfizer has trailblazed with moves to slash its legal roster and modernise its billing practices. Tamara Loomis reports on its latest bid to hand its US employment work to a single firm
On a crisp sunny day in late March, fee earners from 39 law firms gathered at the corporate headquarters of pharmaceuticals giant Pfizer, a nondescript office building a couple of blocks east of Grand Central Station in New York. The collective mood was cheerful. After all, each of the firms still had a piece of Pfizer’s US litigation work. Two years earlier, the company had dumped 80% of its hundreds of outside counsel in a convergence project called P3 – the Pfizer Partnering Programme. Now, representatives from the survivors had been convened to receive an update.
