Ran across this at robhyndman.com:
More and more I hear that many people in business – and in IT in particular – find the behaviour of large law firms and other professional service providers to be alienating and unresponsive to their business problems. And they’re right – large firms are increasingly gearing themselves to focus only on high dollar value work and their culture and the billing philosophies do not lend themselves to a “roll up your sleeves and help me grow my business” attitude. It seems to be getting more and more difficult for businesses to find advisors who understand the client’s problems, and who genuinely want to help.
Ouch. Mr. Hyndman is certainly entitled to his views but being in a somewhat largish firm I would, with respect, not agree. At least not when it comes to the firm I work at. I also don’t think its very fair, to paint all large firms the same brush and imply that lawyers at such firms are only interested in money (and not much else), don’t care about their clients’ business, don’t understand their problems, and don’t want to help.
I think its rather unfortunate that these types of things are said between lawyers and law firms these days. And perhaps I’ll just leave it at that.