Atlanta – When Kevin M. O’Hagan thinks about his days as in-house counsel at Waste Management Inc., the thing that still irks him is the way one of the company’s outside law firms acted like, well, lawyers.

“The worst thing I ever saw them do … was take an alternative-fee arrangement and play lawyer with it,” recalled O’Hagan, now a principal at O’Hagan Smith & Amundsen in Chicago.