NDAs and confidentiality agreements preserve the secrecy of US RFPs

RFP processes by major law departments break into the news occasionally (See my post of March 13, 2007 on Pfizer’s process; Sept. 4, 2005 on the auction of General Electric; April 16, 2007 on changes to GE’s process; and April 22, 2007 on Tyco.). Even so, those exceptions prove the rule. Either journalists do not find competitive bid processes worthy of coverage or the law firms that are invited to take part carefully and scrupulously honor their commitments to disclose nothing about the process.

The law firms who are winners don’t crow about their success and the firms not selected do not leak their own lack of success. Nor do the law departments see advantage in publicity, unlike their counterparts in the UK (See my post of Dec. 12, 2006 about transatlantic differences in disclosure of panel firms.).