Speaking at the Law Firm Leadership Summit at the Park Lane Hotel last week, PowerGen's general counsel David Jackson's views were trenchant: "I think that is appalling."
The subject of Jackson's ire was the fact that none of the firms he has instructed during his career has ever asked him for his input when contemplating strategic moves such as a merger.
Nor have those firms that have actually consummated a merger ever sought to explain its benefits to him, other than to send him a copy of the press release.
Why firms should be like this, when so often they say that their decision-making is 'client-driven' is hard to fathom.
It is understandable that, during merger negotiations, management might prefer to keep the number of people 'in the loop' to an absolute minimum to avoid any advance publicity that could scupper the deal before it is sealed.
Why firms do so little post-merger is more difficult to answer. It may be a sign of the continuing "arrogance" – Jackson again – towards in-house counsel.
It is hard to credit that this can still really go on, but it does. The head of recruitment at a top five firm reacted with horror when Legal Week suggested a few months ago that the firm might recruit among in-house lawyers.
On the other hand, it may be the case that firms think it would be a sign of weakness to ask their clients, such as Jackson, about strategic moves; as if it would be an admission of uncertainty and therefore likely to make the client think that the firm does not know what it is doing.
Whatever the real reason, it leaves the indelible impression that too often firms are guilty of trying to give their clients what they want to give them, rather than delivering what the clients really want.
And far too much of firms' strategic thinking seems to be directed at what their competitors are doing.
That senior management should be deeply concerned about the activities of their rivals is natural, especially following the announcement of the agenda-setting Clifford Chance (CC), Rogers & Wells and Puender Volhard Weber & Axster tie-up.
And it does not stop there. In the last month alone two significant US mergers have taken place, with two Washington DC firms, Covington & Burling and Howrey & Simon hooking up with New York's Howard Smith & Levin and Houston's Arnold White & Durkee respectively.
Another is on the way with Chicago's Rudnick & Wolfe understood to be about to link up with Baltimore's Piper & Marbury.
Meanwhile, accountancy firm PricewaterhouseCoopers has just signed up its third significant grouping of well-respected partners in less than a year, this time in Australia.
To cap it all, last Sunday Lovell White Durrant announced its merger with leading German outfit Boesebeck Droste.
And this week Coudert Brothers has signed up Belgian firm Coppens Van Ommeslaghe & Faures and German firm Schurmann & Partner respectively, the latter whipped from under the nose of Pinsent Curtis.
Meanwhile, in the City, barely a week goes by without another US firm saying that they are going to open in London. Either that, or they are pulling out like Sonnenschein.
"Globalisation is a reality, not a cliche," boomed CC's Keith Clark to the delegates, drawn from a host of US, UK and European firms. It was at one of these summits in the US that Clark and Rogers & Wells' managing partner Larry Cranch first discussed at breakfast the possibility of a tie-up.
Faced with increased competition for fewer, larger clients, it is no surprise that firms get caught up in all this.
A story recounted to delegates by the laconic Macfarlanes senior partner Robert Sutton bears this out.
"Two partners from a US firm and the head of its London office, who was English, came to see us," Sutton told them. "The two Americans gave a very persuasive description of what was going on in the market."
"After about 10 minutes, they turned to their English colleague and said 'John (not his real name), do you have anything to add?'"
"And John said: 'Yes, you [Macfarlanes] will be out of business in 18 months so if I were you I would get on with it."
"That same English lawyer said that
Cravath Swaine & Moore had two years to go," he said to laughter around the conference room.
Recalling another occasion when a US lawyer had once described him as "being on the nationalist wing of the London Bar", Sutton made a powerful plea to delegates "not to believe all the headlines".
Sutton's call deserves to be heard. Whether it will be listened to amid the deafening sound of thundering hooves is an altogether different proposal.
But even Sutton is forced to admit that there are some fundamental changes going on in the legal marketplace. Which, in turn, means that law firm managers are facing huge challenges.
From brilliant but impossible partners to the frenzied pursuit of the best talent, from the opportunities of the Internet to the possible commoditisation of a number of areas of practice, it is a wonder that firms can find anyone brave enough to take up the role.
These managerial headaches mean even though most firms are enjoying outstanding financial results, they know the future's profits may well be at risk. To meet them head on, firms are wisely putting a much greater emphasis on strategic business planning.
In many ways it is quite extraordinary how it is only until recently that many firms started to think along strategic lines in a committed way.
Mel Immergut, chairman of US finance practice Milbank Tweed Hadley & McCloy, confessed at the summit that as recently as five years ago his partners "used to roll their eyes" at the prospect of having to develop a formal, written strategy.
Not any more. Now a copy of the firm's strategy paper is kept in the boardroom and any partner making a business proposal has to justify it within the framework of that paper.
Bird & Bird chairman David Kerr, whose firm has benefited greatly from adopting a formal strategy, spoke of the "natural reluctance of lawyers to set down what they want to do in writing".
Kerr's firm has been at the forefront of strategic thinking for years, so is it any surprise that it was selected for praise by British Telecom's Alan Whitfield?
There is no doubt that attention to strategic business planning is now essential, if only to manage firms' extraordinary growth rates.
Allen & Overy's managing partner, John Rink, pointed out that 10 years ago the attitude of the partners at his firm was that they did not and would not practice the laws other than those of England and Wales.
Now they practise 18 different local laws – "and others I may not know about" – in 22 countries.
Many of the other delegates in the hall would have recognised the curve of Rink's graph showing the firm's size.
But to paraphrase 'M', played by Judi Dench in the Bond film Goldeneye, some of the strategies adopted by firms could be described as "boys (or girls) with toys". You might enjoy the weaponry, but does it really get the job done for the people that matter? Clients may be diminishing in number, but any strategy drawn up without really putting them at the forefront is heading for dangerous territory.
In the midst of all this, management would be well advised to heed Howe's law. Never heard of it? Well this law says: "Every man has a strategy that will not work."
One that fails to give the client what he wants, instead opting for what the firm wants to give him, will not prove the exception to that rule.