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You are viewing ARCHIVED CONTENT released online between 1 April 2010 and 24 August 2018 or content that has been selectively archived and is no longer active. Content in this archive is NOT UPDATED, and links may not function.Extract from article by Elizabeth Olson
The financial fortunes of big law firms appear to be on the upswing, according to a survey released Tuesday by Citi Private Bank’s L aw F irm Group .
The survey said revenue rose 5.8 percent in the first three months of the year from the same period a year ago. It was the strongest gain since the first quarter of 2008 — before the economic meltdown of the financial crisis.
The gain came on stronger demand, higher rates and a shorter debt collection cycle. The upbeat findings echoed a separate overview issued last month by The American Lawyer, which found that the country’s 100 largest firms had grown for six consecutive years, including in major measures like revenue per lawyer. Total gross revenue, the legal publication said, rose 2.7 percent in 2015.
Despite some turmoil in the legal industry, the Citi law group report found that the rates lawyers charge for their work climbed 3.2 percent in the first quarter from a year ago. A few lawyers, according to some published reports, are now charging $2,000 an hour. Law firm coffers swelled early in the year when clients began paying a backlog of bills. But there were warning signs about industry growth.
“There’s no question, there are headwinds for the rest of the year,” said John Wilmouth, a Citi law group adviser and author of the report, which surveyed 176 firms based in the United States. Demand for legal services rose 1.8 percent in the first quarter, compared with a year ago. But the report’s authors cautioned that “the demand for traditional law firm services has remained relatively soft, the supply of legal service providers has increased, creating a hypercompetitive market and forcing law firms to think about how they deliver legal services.”
Read the complete article at Big Law Firms See Strongest Revenue Gains Since ’08, Survey Finds