European in-house counsel will outsource more work to law firms over the next 12 months, according to a survey released this week - but they do not maintain that external lawyers offer value for money.

The survey of 187 large European companies - carried out by information provider LexisNexis Martindale-Hubble - found UK in-house lawyers more optimistic than those in other European countries.

In the UK, 43% of respondents said they would outsource more legal work next year, while the figure was 28%, 23% and 25% for Germany, France and Italy respectively.

The sectors most likely to increase work next year were automotive (45%), financial and consumer (both 35%), according to the survey.

But all in-house lawyers agreed on one point - external lawyers do not offer value for money.

Some 73% said the cost was either very or a bit high.

In France, in-house lawyers are more than twice as likely to be influenced by acquaintances when selecting external lawyers (77%) than in the UK (32%), which was the lowest of any country.

The other main factors in the UK were having experience of firms on the other side (19%), research (14%) and firms' marketing (11%).

It also found that UK in-house lawyers were the most likely to consider that expectations of their executive management had changed - becoming more nervous and expecting greater value for money - after the Enron scandal and the economic downturn.

Almost half of the UK lawyers noted this change.

Jeremy Fleming