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Focus, Law firm management: A year of living dangerously

The paradigm shift which is under way was summed up by a large corporation's general counsel at a recent conference in Chicago - ‘the shape of the successful law firm is not a pyramid’. The traditional leveraged model of law firms with large numbers of associates is under attack, the same general counsel commenting that partner: associate ratios of 1:1 delivered better results than 2 or 3:1. Add to the mix the issue that in house lawyers are increasingly undertaking transactional work and only instructing outside lawyers on the discrete difficult bits, and e-billing (which should not make any difference, but in practice does), and the earnings of partners in many a traditional, highly leveraged law firm will have gone west for all time.

3-Apr-2009

3:53 pm