Over the past decade, with the pressure to cut costs wherever possible, many legal departments continue to rely on a smaller core group of external firms to help achieve higher levels of business performance. Often termed 'convergence,' these and related strategies allow greater accountability for results and greater efficiency from dealing with fewer outside firms, particularly as each panel firm gets to know your organization better. As this trend continues, however, of the hidden problems of convergence is gradually beginning to emerge. Some companies beginning to find that even their preferred law firms' 'other' offices may fail to measure up the high standards of the main office with whom you had been used to dealing with and on which, in truth, your original selection process might mostly have concentrated.