For years, legal practices have been happy to grow by growing the size of their clients' legal budgets.

The business strategy has been, and still is for many firms: What can we do next so they will need more of our services?But today, there are huge opportunities for law firms to do the exact opposite.

There is tremendous scope to help clients mange their legal affairs in order to control and reduce their corporate legal spend.

If law firms can do that, then they will gain a larger slice of that spend.

The cake might get smaller, but it will be largely their cake, and a much more palatable one for the client.So far, the reaction among the legal profession to this idea has been largely that of 'You're shooting yourself in the foot.

You won't have a business left in a few years' time.'The debate about the cost of corporate lawyering is under way in the UK as law firms come under increasing pressure from their clients for a new kind of business relationship.

It is being driven partly by US multinationals, partly by e-commerce and partly by the increased boardroom focus on managing business risk and tight control of the overall legal budget.

As a result, clients are demanding flexibility, value-adding innovation, efficiency, better communication, and billing transparency.But the writing has been on the wall for some time.

In-house lawyers are sophisticated buyers of external legal services, and they are well aware of the need for legal advice to bring commercial value to their firms.As a recent survey among the in-house lawyers of the UK's top 100 companies has shown, they have become more value conscious, putting strains on existing relationships.

And yet eight out of ten say they are satisfied with their legal bills.

Their main concern, it seems, is not about the level of the fees but the transparency of billing information - and here four out of five say it is a priority issue.So although the debate is often reduced to talk about the d emise of the hourly rate, it is not primarily about downward pressure on fees.

Nor is it about technical expertise.

It is about upward pressure on the quality of service that lawyers give their clients.

Above all, it is about proactive legal management - reducing the client's exposure to risk.Getting this relationship right is the key to any change in billing practice.

It means working in closer partnership so clients understand more clearly what their advisers are doing for them, why they are doing it, and how it adds value.Draw a straight line.

At the right-hand end put 'partnering'.

In its purest form, it means that advisers share some of the investment costs with the client and reap some of the rewards.

And it requires from advisers a huge commitment in IT, people and training.

But they are rewarded for being proactive, for efficiency, for innovation, and for the quality of their work.At the other end of the line put 'traditional relationship' - you wait for a brief, you do it, you bill.

Most law firms in the UK offer a service that is somewhere between the centre of this line and the left-hand end.

Few do transactional work for fixed fees; even fewer have success fees or value-based fees.The partnering approach is unique.

But there are lessons there for law firms and for some in-house departments.

They need to face up to the issues of co-investment, of sharing information and of monitoring clients' budgets and expenditure.

They need to look at more flexible billing systems and the transparency of their billing information.

And they need to consider value-based billing where they can be rewarded for the quality of their work, not just the quantity.How will this happen? It has to be a joint effort.

Law firms need to encourage staff and clients to find better ways of working together.

And clients need to push their advisers harder, demanding that they work towards prevention, not just cure.The hourly rate still has a place, but is it living on borrowed time?