GE's legal team aims to be kinder, gentler to law firms

As general counsel at General Electric, a company that many corporate law firms would love to call a client, Alex Dimitrief holds a lot of power. If he or one of his colleagues wants a law firm to bill GE (NYSE: GE) at a lower rate or to keep young attorneys off a case, chances are the law-firm partner on the other end of the table is going to listen.

But Dimitrief knows what it's like to sit on that end of that table. Before joining GE a decade ago, he was a partner at the Chicago white-shoe…