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Legal News

: Legal Blog Watch

The Worst Is Over, Unless You're a Partner Who Wants to Keep Your Beach House

By Eric Lipman

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The annual "State of the Legal Marketplace" report, officially known as the 2010 Client Advisory, was released today by Hildebrandt Baker Robbins and the Citi Private Bank Law Firm Group. The report is available online in its entirety (PDF), and here are some highlights: 2009 was "the worst year for the legal market in at least the past half century" the NLJ 250 laid off 5,259 lawyers in 2009 there were 57 law firm mergers and 18 dissolutions last year; and cost-cutting will remain paramount in 2010, and one of the primary methods for achieving cost savings will be to boot some partners Yeah, you read that last one right. According to one of the Hildebrandt managing directors involved in the report, there just isn't a lot of room left to cut costs elsewhere. [Pause for associate evil laughter.] The authors of the report conclude that the events of the past year or so may not be just your standard cyclical "blip," but the beginning of a fundamental shift in the way the legal marketplace operates, marking the end of standard yearly billing rate increases, increased resort to outsourcing and clients just generally refusing to accept terms of engagement unilaterally...

Full post as published by Legal Blog Watch on March 03, 2010 (boomark / email).