One-stop shopping at giant global law firms has its limit, says Ben Heineman, GE’s former top lawyer
The rise of large, high-quality, global corporate law departments started more than 20 years ago. It was aimed, in part, at breaking up the monopolies that law firms had with corporations. Using a range of initiatives from requests for proposals to auctions, in-house counsel sought to end these cosy relationships and introduce a measure of competition into the law firm-client dynamic. The mantra of ‘lawyers, not law firms’ was uttered so often that it became a cliche.
