Legal Commentary

Two + Two = Return To The Old Ways?

By Patrick J. Lamb

What should be made of these two stories?

1.  Associate salaries in a holding pattern.  Salaries have stagnated.  Good news for clients, who have been critical of the ever increasing salary structures employed by their firms.

2.  So, what's been happening with those hourly rates now that costs are stagnating?  That's right, they have been increasing!  AmLaw Daily reports on a CT Tymetrix study of $4 billion worth of timesheets prepared by 90,000 people at 3,500 firms over the period 2007 to 2009.  Findings?  Almost 20% of the lawyers increased their hourly rates by more than $100 during this period, rates in general increased faster than the rate of inflation, and rates in Dallas, Atlanta and Richmond were up more than 21%, while rates in Chicago, New York and Los Angeles increased at a 14% pace.  This, while clients were slashing in-house budgets and losing huge portions of their market cap.

Conclusions?  For one, it appears that law firms are not "getting it."  Is another that clients don't seem to care that their law firms don't seem to give a damn?

Full post as published by In Search of Perfect Client Service on September 10, 2010 (boomark / email).