Career Exploration

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 in the rankings. 

The publishers claim to have surveyed more than 9,000 clients and just about the same number of attorneys. They also apparently factored in the 3.1 million individual attorney evaluations that the Best Lawyers enterprise compiled.  They also claim to have considered: attorney experience, number of clients, billing ranges, the number of matters, pro bono work, and diversity also counted.

This set of rankings follows the recent release of a similar commercial enterprise called Chambers Associate (published by Chambers and Partners).  These rankings and surveys, along with other more established ones like The Vault Reports Guide to America’s Top 100 Law Firms and the American Lawyer surveys — http://www.americanlawyer.com/ (see Surveys and Rankings section of the left side bar menu) ought to be viewed with a healthy amount of circumspection. 

In making you aware of this potential new research resource, we are not offering an endorsement of it nor are we intending to vouch for ts methods or conclusions.  We encourage you to examine its particular methodology and think critically about its conclusions — just as you would with any other survey or rankings list. 

One other thing to keep in mind is that the U.S. News/Best Lawyers rankings are designed for clients to determine which firms to hire; it was not designed to inform law graduates about the best places to work.   
We continue to believe that the best resource for deciding the best place for you to work (summer and beyond) is “human intelligence” — talking to one or more CDO attorney-counselors, lawyers who are practicing in the areas in which you want to work, 3Ls or classmates who worked at firms this past summer, etc. 

Berkeley Law students can find other students’ prior summer evaluations (along with their contact information) in the b-Line (click on the “Summer Evaluations” shortcut from the b-Line homepage).  

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 on candidates who exhibit flexibility, resiliency, creativity, empathy, self-awareness, self-control, optimism, confidence, self-directedness, and determination despite setbacks.  Persons with high EIQ display good judgment and get along well with others.  (For more on EI, you should check out one or more of Daniel Goleman’s books on the subject.)   

You really should read the Ari Kaplan’s entire post, but here are a couple of key quotes:

“Individuals who demonstrate thoughtfulness about the needs of an organization’s clients, the institution’s goals and the state of the legal industry will distinguish themselves.”

“[W]hen you meet someone, add a follow-up call or e-mail to your electronic calendar. For instance, if during a conversation someone shares an important court date, a key client meeting or a personal event, set a reminder to ask him or her about it in a week, a month or even longer, depending on the appropriate timing. Every interface is an opportunity.” (emphasis added)

NLJ’s Midsize “Hot List”

The National Law Journal recently released its 2010 list of 20 midsize firms (i.e., firms with between 50 and 150 lawyers) that “have thrived amid the downturn … [and]  experienced a string of successes and that showed innovative ways to run their operations despite the economy.” 

UPDATE:  The article apparently can only be accessed by NLJ “premium subscribers.”  We have a hard copy of the 7/12/10 National Law Journal in the CDO, which you can review.  Also, the online publication JD Journal has a page with a series of links to the websites of the 20 law firm on the list from which you can piece together the substance of the NLJ article.  Feel free to contact me if you have any questions.

Q-2 Numbers Are In: Demand For Legal Services Remains Flat

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.

Demand For Legal Services Remained Flat in Q-1 2010

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 January – March 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, on average, demand for legal services (measured by billable hours) for the first quarter of 2010 was flat.  Also, while demand in the Silicon Valley market increased by 1%, it decreased by 5% in SF and LA. 

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.

Podcast Predicting Economic Prospects For Firms in 2010

Thought you might be interested in this short (about 6 min.) interview with the person who runs the Peer Monitor. 

You can access the podcast at Thomson Reuter’s Legal Current blog here.  (Hat tip: legal industry consultant Hildebrandt’s blog).    

FYI — We’ve blogged about the extremely helpful Peer Monitor Index before here and here.  The Peer Monitor system is essentially 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.

 

Reflections on the “Mommy Track”

Interesting reflection about the “work-life” balance issue (which we used to hear more about prior to the Great Recession) in Slate.  Its written by a 1993 Harvard Law School graduate who did both the “fast” track and the “Mommy Track.”  Those are her terms, though part of her article asks whether there aren’t better ones.

Among other things, she reports that the majority of the women in her class at HLS have stepped off the “fast” track, but as many as a third of them have part-time, flexible job arrangements that are working for them. 

Legal Market Experts Predict Another Flat Year

Hildebrandt Baker Robbins and  Citigroup’s Citi Private Bank division just issued a joint Client Advisory, which among other things, predicts that revenue (and profits) at large law firms will be flat to ever so slightly up for 2010.

The report also identifies a number of trends observed in 2009.

Hildebrandt is one of the largest and best known business consultancies to large law firms.  Citibank’s Private Bank provides financial services to some of the largest firms in the country.  We’ve blogged about their excellent client advisory reports in the past (e.g., here). 

You should read the entire report, which you can find here.  Also, the American Lawyer’s AmLaw Daily published a helpful summary here.

Among some of its key general findings are:

  • Its no surprise that 2009 was a horrible year for law firms, but the report calls it “the worst . . . in at least the past half century.”
  • there were some hopeful signs in Q4 2009, but there is “little prospect of a robust recovery” for 2010 and, when the recovery does begin, it will be “quite gradual.”
  • over the next several years, the “fundamental economics of legal practice” will be re-evaluated and significantly changed. 

Some key specific observations and predictions include:

  • Demand for large law firm services fell 4% in 2009 (contrasted with the period from 2001-07 during which demand increased by 4% each year).
  • At the same time, clients increased pressure to obtain discounts, fee caps, and alternative fee arrangements, which caused realization rates to decline.
  • Collectively, 5,259 large law firm lawyers were laid off in 2009, which amounts to 4% of the total NLJ 250 lawyer population and nearly 9% of the total associate population; in 2008, these firms increased their lawyer population by 4%
  • In addition to payroll, firms did quite a bit of cutting on the expense side (a 5.6% reduction in 2009, which contrasts with 9-10% yearly increases in prior years back to 2001).
  • Q4 of 2009 showed some signs that the market has bottomed out (M&A, general corporate, tax, capital markets, and real estate practices showed some improvement)
  • Profits per equity partner (PPP) were essentially flat in 2009, which contrasts with a 3% drop in 2008 and 11.5% (average) yearly increases between 2001-07.
  • Because the recovery will be “quite gradual” and because of expected continued pressures to keep fees low, “law firm revenues will be flat to only slightly higher for 2010.”
  • Law firms will need to continue cutting expenses — one of the only places left is among its partners — they need to thin their non-equity partner ranks and weed out marginally performing equity partners
  • PPP in 2010 will be flat to up by, at most, 5% on average
  • The first 100 firms on the AmLaw 200 list of largest firms will continue to be harder hit by the economy than the second 100 firms and some regional firms