I worked as a lawyer on a Microsoft acquisition once. We had once a week 40-person conference calls for status updates. The company being acquired had a total of 9 employees I think.
The calls were scheduled for an hour. But, with 40 people on the line, the calls always ran late. At least 4 of the people of that call were billing $400+ / hr.
Most of the things I had to present during the call could have been resolved with a quick email to the relevant party that said "Hey, this looks funny. Do you care about this?" But the person running the entire thing insisted that I prepare Powerpoint slides for the meeting. And after I showed off my slides and everyone on the call had a chance to ask questions and discuss, the conclusion was almost invariably, "No, we don't really care about that."
The calls were scheduled for an hour. But, with 40 people on the line, the calls always ran late. At least 4 of the people of that call were billing $400+ / hr.
Most of the things I had to present during the call could have been resolved with a quick email to the relevant party that said "Hey, this looks funny. Do you care about this?" But the person running the entire thing insisted that I prepare Powerpoint slides for the meeting. And after I showed off my slides and everyone on the call had a chance to ask questions and discuss, the conclusion was almost invariably, "No, we don't really care about that."