Corporate clients are getting more aggressive about broadening and expanding their outside counsel guidelines, according to a number of industry consultants and lawyers who represent law firms. And some attorneys are pushing back.

“Some of the demands clients are making of their outside counsel are so over-broad that they are objectively outrageous,” said New York-based Anthony Davis, who represents lawyers and law firms as a partner in the professional practice group at Hinshaw & Culbertson. ”I talk to general counsel of large and midsized firms all the time, and they are repeatedly being confronted with demands that are so extreme that they are or ought to be unpalatable.”