Ask any partner in a commercial law firm and you'll get a consistent answer. Clients are a demanding bunch, with constant pressure to squeeze fees, arduous panel processes and, of course, the value-added extras they want in return for winning a spot on one of these illustrious rosters.

Ask an in-houser and their reasoning for wanting all of these things and more from their extremely well-paid and profitable advisers is clear. They are under pressure to demonstrate value to their board while coping with the increased workloads that come alongside globalisation and more regulation.

However, results from more than 1,400 buyers of legal services – ranging from GCs to chief executives – surveyed for Legal Week's Client Satisfaction Report suggest that, whatever they are saying and asking of their external advisers, companies are now more satisfied with the service they receive from law firms than they were before. And importantly what they want from their advisers – be it quality legal advice or broader commercial advice – is broadly in line with their satisfaction in each area.

So for any law firms thinking of spending hundreds of thousands of pounds on consultants to tell them how they should run their client programmes or indeed their businesses, what clients want seems both pretty clear and pretty obvious: good-quality legal advice as fast as they can get it from partners they know possess an understanding of the wider issues facing their business.

What clients just don't care about as much – according to the survey at least – is how firms deliver this service as long as they can get it at the right price. In more buoyant economic conditions even price is something they feel more satisfied with.

All of which could simply reflect the fact that since the downturn in-house lawyers really have managed to extract enough value from their external advisers to satisfy even the most demanding finance director. Or of course it could mean that they now just take these newer models of delivery – such as the legal process outsourcing and near-shoring the survey found they did not care about – as a given.

One area in which firms still need to impress though is billing practices. Firms can have all the adaptable, flexible, low-cost legal service centres and new technology in the world, but if they are still using chargeable hours they are getting it wrong. Just ask the clients.