While clients are mostly confident about law firms' technical expertise, the 2010 ALB China In-house Survey showed that a large number of respondents stated they were not particularly satisfied with their external counsel's client services. The majority of negative comments were regarding the availability and approachability of lawyers, their responsiveness to requests, initiatives to understand clients' businesses and objectives, and how proactive they are in recognising potential issues and thinking of solutions.   

"Lawyers in China have started to specialise in certain areas of law and are very diligent and responsible. Although many have developed strong technical expertise, they still lack first-hand knowledge in their clients' businesses and strategies," said a deputy legal head at a leading securities firm. "Some external counsel only take an over-protective, limiting role - instead of giving a clear opinion or definite advice, they tend to provide detailed analysis of the law or equivocal answers. This kind of advice and service essentially has no value to clients."

In certain new and niche areas of the law, in-house counsel are also facing difficulties finding satisfactory external help. "It's a challenge to find real expertise from outside counsel in newly emerging areas such as e-commerce and internet issues. In addition, it's difficult to find outside counsel that can provide sophisticated business judgments tailored to a specific set of facts or transactions, rather than simply an outline of the relevant rules and regulations," said eLong's vice President & general counsel Sami Farhad. "The result is that it's easy to spend on outside counsel, but hard to obtain high-quality, timely advice on newly-emerging issues." ALB
 

*To find out more about the issues in-house legal departments face in 2010 and how their external service providers should adapt their offerings accordingly, please see the full 2010 ALB China In-house Survey Report published in the April edition of the ALB China magazine.