Tender mercies

Talk about saying the wrong thing.

The reaction of a bunch of in-house lawyers to a law firm partner’s advice on how to improve the tendering process was telling. “Sometimes,” the partner had observed, “legal departments send invitations to tender to the wrong people at our firm, which makes it difficult for us to respond properly.”

The room – a breakout session at last week’s Legal Week Corporate Counsel Forum – fell silent. Eventually, one of the in-house lawyers responded, to nods of approval: “Surely that’s your problem, not ours.” Cue back-peddling from said partner.

Actually, I have quite a bit of sympathy for the partner. For me, this little episode throws light on the unequal relationship that often exists between well-resourced law firms and over-stretched legal departments.

Of course it doesn’t matter how and to whom you send your tender invitation, if you are prepared to pay a premium to those firms that are able to clean up after your incompetence. On the other hand, if your objective is to get good value out of your existing and potential advisers, then it is probably worth doing a bit of leg work to ensure that your invitation to tender reaches the appropriate person.

This brings me to another little episode. At the same session an in-house lawyer spoke in admiring terms of an outside lawyer who said it was his job to make the in-house lawyer ‘look good’. Funnily enough, I’d heard the exact same scenario recounted by an in-house lawyer at a similar gathering several years ago. Except on that occasion the in-house lawyer regarded it as an insult to be told that he needed someone else to make him ‘look good’. That’s the spirit...