Today’s Recorder contains an article about 2010 revenues and profits at eight Northern California based law firms. It also reports on interviews with some of the firms’ leaders about what they are expecting for the future. Read the whole thing here. Notably, head count at six out of the eight firms dropped in 2010. One highlight: […]
N. CA-based Firm Leaders Hopeful For A Better Year
Experts: Legal Market Stabilizes, But At Well Below Pre-Recessionary Levels
The latest annual Hildebrandt/Citibank Client Advisory is out. We’ve posted about the Client Advisories before (see here). You can access the whole report here. Among other things, it predicts: continued sluggish demand for legal services on the part of corporate clients associate recruitment goals have stabilized at levels much lower than in pre-recession years and are likely […]
Some Biglaw Financial Forecasting
The National Law Journal recently conducted a roundtable with 3 managing partners at large DC-based firms. They talked about staffing, rates, client demands, lateral recruiting, the political landscape and the future of the legal business model. A summary of the discussion appears here. You should read the whole thing, but a few highlights: IP […]
Latest on Working Part-Time in Biglaw
NALP, the Association of Legal Career Professionals, just released its annual analysis of the use of part-time schedules by lawyers at law firms. The headlines are that part-time lawyers remain the exception and that their ranks are comprised mostly of women. However, the number of male partners practicing part-time “edge[d] up.”
Q 3 Numbers: Large Law Firms Lose A Little Bit of Ground
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 July – September of 2010. You can read a summary of the report here. You can read the whole thing here. Among other things, the report shows that — very much in […]
Current State of the Economy
A good, if not cheery summary of the current state of the U.S. economy appeared in Wednesday’s NY Times. Read it and next time you get an email from the CDO with a sentence that begins “In this economy . . .” you’ll know exactly what we mean.
Passage of Dodd-Frank Bill Will Increase SEC Enforcement Activities
Today’s Recorder contains an article written by a partner in Covington & Burling’s SF office who predicts that the SEC will ramp up its enforcement activities as a result of new powers conferred by the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. Unfortunately, the article is password-protected, so you will need to get the print […]
Legal Employer Survey: Some Expect An Increase in Hiring Levels
A brief article appearing in the Recorder and on the Legal Pad blog (via law.com) reports on a survey commissioned by one of the major legal staffing companies, Robert Half International. 100 lawyers (at firms with 20 or more employees) and 100 in-house lawyers (at companies with at least 1000 employees) were surveyed. 59% expect no change […]
New System of Law Firm Rankings
Two commercial enterprises, U.S. News and Best Lawyers, have released a set of rankings of over 8,000 law firms. Rather than assigning a numerical rank to each, they divide specific practice areas of firms into one of 3 tiers. They actually assign each practice area both a local and a national tier ranking. 81 different practice areas are included […]
Networking and Emotional Intelligence More Important Than Ever
There’s some great advice in a recent posting in lawjobs.com by Ari Kaplan, a former BIGLAW attorney who wrote a great book on networking (“The Opportunity Maker: Strategies for Inspiring Your Legal Career Through Creative Networking and Business Development.”) The posting stresses the importance of emotional intelligence (EI) to legal employers. In a recovering market, they will be focussing […]