Legal Marketing & PR

Business Development in a Recovering Economy

By Larry Bodine

At last there is good news: The legal profession has entered a recovering economy. The grinding downturn that brought layoffs of 5,259 lawyers – 4.3 percent of the lawyer workforce nationwide, according to the Nov. 9, 2009 National Law Journal – is ending. Four separate research studies support this conclusion:

• The 2010 Client Advisory by Hildebrandt Baker Robbins. The legal market finally 'bottomed out' at the end of 2009.
• The Law Firm Group at Citi Private Bank. 'We believe the worst is over,' said Dan DiPietro, advisory head of Citi, an arm of Citigroup.
• The BTI Consulting Group in its 'Premium Practices Forecast 2010.' It predicts corporate legal spending by large companies will grow nearly 5 percent.
• The February 2010 Robert Half Legal survey of 300 attorneys from among the largest law firms and corporations.

But there's a catch. Relations between lawyers and business clients have changed permanently. The research studies cited above agree that law practice will not go back to pre-recession business as usual. Some of the changes include the following: ...

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Full post as published by Larry Bodine's LawMarketing Blog on April 08, 2010 (boomark / email).