Tag: law firms

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If you do nothing else today, read this Report.

Because this is so wrong on so may levels and it needs to be fixed – now!

“Lawyers who were highly “overcommitted” to their work—characterized by researchers as an all-encompassing level of devotion, a sentiment reflected in recent American Lawyer surveys of partners and associates—were more than twice as likely to consider suicide than those who maintained boundaries with their work.”Lawyers who were highly “overcommitted” to their work—characterized by researchers as an all-encompassing level of devotion, a sentiment reflected in recent American Lawyer surveys of partners and associates—were more than twice as likely to consider suicide than those who maintained boundaries with their work.”

‘Lawyers Who Are Highly Stressed Are 22 Times More Likely To Consider Suicide‘ by Staci Zaretsky on Above The Law

Make sure you learn to maintain boundaries at work everyone!

As usual comments are my own.

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Photo credit Stormseeker on Unsplash.

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hmmm…

Two articles with vastly different headlines:

‘As Law Firms Push Aggressive Rate Increases, Clients Have Room to Negotiate‘ by Andrew Maloney in the American Lawyer, and

‘Almost half of US lawyers see no rate increases in 2022, Wolters Kluwer report shows‘ by Ben Edwards* in The Global Legal Post

In the first article:

the mean rate increase across law firm segments last year was around 5.6%.

In the second article:

Some 27% of law firm timekeepers saw no increase, while 13% saw average rates go down

So what’s the problem?

Well here it is: both articles are written from the same underlying source material – the recently published Wolters Kluwer’s LegalVIEW Insights report.

As usual comments are my own.

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  • disclosure: I know Ben Edwards and he is a fine journalist (which is not to say that Andrew Maloney isn’t, just that I don’t know Andrew).

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Who are the top 10 global law firms by revenue?

Citing a survey done by law.com International, abovethelaw.com has published the following list of the World’s Top 10 law firms by revenue:-

  1. Kirkland & Ellis: $6,042,000,000
  2. Latham & Watkins: $5,448,778,000
  3. DLA Piper: $3,471,437,000
  4. Baker McKenzie: $3,126,729,000
  5. Skadden Arps: $3,022,380,000
  6. Dentons: $2,940,600,000
  7. White & Case: $2,869,800,000
  8. Sidley Austin: $2,795,426,000
  9. Clifford Chance: $2,711,508,000
  10. Ropes & Gray: $2,674,046,000

Two take-aways I have from this list are:

  • There are a lot of zeros in those numbers – have law firms finally joined the #Big4 in the Billionaires Club?
  • Clifford Chance are the only Magic Circle firm in that list – so maybe revenue per partner really isn’t the same as profit per partner…

Enjoy the day!

rws_01

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The Two Biggest Reasons Lawyers Are Afraid to Raise Legal Fees

Interesting article on abovethelaw.com on why lawyers should not be afraid to raise their rates even in times of potential recession (‘Don’t Be Afraid to Raise Your Legal Fees‘) by Roy S. Ginsburg.

In the article Roy sets out the following two reasons for why lawyers may be reluctant to increase their rates:

  • Reason No. 1: Fear of Losing Business to Competitors
  • Reason No. 2: Fear of Missing Out on New Clients

I’m going to put it out there and say Roy is right here, lawyers are scared/fearful of both those issues.

But, and there is always a but, only if they adopt competitor pricing – where they are always looking over their shoulder to see what their competitors in the market are charging.

My own thoughts on this issue though are this: Know your product; Understand your value; and Don’t give a damn about anyone else – you don’t have competitors, you have customers; always show them the value of your service and they will remain loyal to you. Period.

Which, to be fair, is kind of what Roy is also saying. So go over and read it – it’ll take you all of 10 minutes and it’s certainly worth it.

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Has the unbundling experiment finally failed?

Really interested to read a post by Neil Rose on the Legal Futures blog yesterday that ‘Insurance and client capability are “main barriers” to unbundling‘.

That professional indemnity insurance might be higher for unbundled matters has long been discussed, and not without merit in my view given the risks associated with quality of work and associated scoping of that work – in other words, correctly identifying who is doing what, when.

While the sample used in the Solicitors Regulation Authority’s (SRA) report quoted heavily in Rose’s article could hardly be called #BigLaw (as I think the term is called these days), one of the comments in the report was very telling:

“Interestingly, insurance companies find there is less risk where a firm uses technology because there is an audit trail.”

While I could be wrong, I suspect that could be the case in many circumstances relating to PI coverage in unbundled matters going forward.

Shared platforms anyone!?!…