The well-known legal business consulting firm Hildebrandt Baker Robbins just published a report of its Peer Monitor Index, which includes information about key law firm business metrics for April – June of 2010.
You can read a summary of the report here. You can read the whole thing here.
Among other things, the report concludes that there has been “no meaningful growth” in the legal marketplace so far this year. Accordingly, firms are continuing their aggressive cost cutting.
Moreover, a slowdown in the rate of productivity [hours per attorney] growth may “suggest[] that the legal industry may be facing a prolonged period of slow growth.” The report continues: “If so, firms will face increasing pressure to balance hiring decisions against the shifting patterns of demand.”
We’ve blogged about the Peer Monitor system before, but to refresh you , it is a service that allows law firms to access their peers’ financial data (in the aggregate) in exchange for supplying their own data to the system for others to access (on a normalized and aggregated basis). There are 35 Am Law 100 firms, 35 Am Law 200 firms and 30 NLJ 250 firms in the system. You can find more information about the Peer Monitor system here.