Now big law firms are doing the same thing with clients and hoping for similar results.

With competition for legal work becoming ever sharper, law firms in Philadelphia and around the nation are doubling back to corporate clients for hard-nosed assessments on everything from fees to the quality of the legal work to the communication skills of their lawyers.

Some have appointed full-time staffs to do the job and have institutionalized the process by putting clients on set rotations and making sure senior managers review the results.

Other firms outsource the work to consulting firms that conduct the interviews themselves or survey clients by e-mail or with hard-copy questionnaires.

"It's become a kind of ripple effect," said Charles A. Maddock, a partner at the legal consulting firm of Altman Weil. "I think what happens is the clients who have been [surveyed] go to their other firms and say, 'Why haven't you spoken to us?' Once that happens, the lawyers huddle and start doing it themselves or go out and get someone."

The results can be counterintuitive.

At Ballard Spahr Andrews & Ingersoll, chairman Arthur Makadon said clients suggested that the golf outings, tickets and other favors that firms spread around are viewed more as an imposition on the clients' time than as a perk.

On the other hand, the firm's seminars on ongoing legal themes are very popular, and Makadon said he plans to expand them.

To get a more objective assessment, Ballard and other firms in Philadelphia have appointed staffers who are not part of the legal team representing the client to do the surveys.

Ballard has a former journalist doing the interviews, while other firms like Reed Smith, a Pittsburgh-based giant with 150 lawyers in Philadelphia, have appointed lawyers who once worked as general counsel, on the theory that they would have a better understanding of the issues facing a corporate client's in-house legal team.

In most cases though, the goal is to send someone who does not have a direct stake in the relationship between the firm and the client.

Martha E. Candiello, a former general counsel for Sunoco Chemicals who now travels the globe for Reed Smith touching base with clients, says one benefit is that she's able to illicit more information than the lawyers actually doing the work.

Clients, she says, are reluctant to be frank with the lawyers they work with daily.

"I always get a little bit more," Candiello said. "Some people are reluctant to say even the slightest negative thing."

Where clients once focused largely on legal competence and trustworthiness, now they want outside counsel also to be deeply knowledgeable about their businesses and to think of themselves as partners in the enterprise, Altman Weil's Maddock says.

Still, many companies say they are never approached by their law firms for assessments of their legal work.

An Altman Weil survey of corporate clients found that while more than 85 percent said it was important to give their outside firms feedback, only 40 percent said they ever were approached by their lawyers for an evaluation of their work.

Firms that do the surveys say the results are revealing.

"We fortunately haven't flunked any courses or gotten any scathing reviews," said Duane Morris chairman and CEO, John Soroko. "But sometimes if you are intelligent and really read between the lines you find that while you may have gotten a passing grade you can drill down and find out how you can get an A."

Law firms say they avoid using the interviews to market new services to their clients out of concern that the interviews would lose credibility, but it often happens that the surveys reveal potential opportunities for new business.

"We are there to find out if you (the client) are happy with our service and how it can be improved," said Julie Meyers, the head of the client survey program at Duane Morris.

But she said she might learn during an interview that the company was dealing with a merger and needed some additional legal help in that arena.

"I am not going to push that with the client, but I would tell the attorney" representing the client, she said.

At Montgomery McCracken Walker & Rhoads, chairman Stephen Madva has taken on the job of contacting clients himself.

Like others who seek client feedback, Madva says he regularly hears from clients who complain about legal costs.

That's an especially tough issue to explain when the opponents' lawyers are driving up costs through, say, an avalanche of discovery motions and requests.

In those instances, Madva says the firm has learned to give clients a heads-up during litigation that costs may spike for a time. That way clients can plan, he says.

Clients, Madva said, "expect candor and candor often means saying, 'These are the risks.' "