In the latest Thomson Reuters Institute Market Insights podcast, we look into the recently released annual "State of the Legal Market" report
The recent 2022 Report on the State of the Legal Market shows that the U.S. legal market has remained resilient despite the challenges wrought by the global pandemic of the past two years. Yet, myriad challenges remain for many law firms and how they manage to navigate these problems will go a long way to determining if this resiliency will survive.
The annual State of the Legal Market report, recently published by the Center on Ethics and the Legal Profession at Georgetown University Law Center and the Thomson Reuters Institute, reviews the performance of U.S. law firms and breaks down the factors that drive the need for firms to take a longer-range, more strategic view of their market positions.
In this latest podcast on the Thomson Reuters Market Insights channel, Bill Josten, manager of legal industry and law firm content at Thomson Reuters Institute, speaks with Jim Jones, a senior fellow with Georgetown Law and the report’s chief author, about some of topics that have garnered the most attention since the report’s release, as well as a few topics that have perhaps flown a bit more under the radar.
You can listen to the full podcast here
In the podcast, the pair discusses how can lawyers say they’re working harder than ever before when the numbers may tell us a different story? Indeed, talent issues and related compensation challenges are proving to be a major issue in the current legal market. In fact, the pair examine how higher compensation doesn’t seem to be stemming the rates of attrition of associates from law firms. So, that leaves the question of what steps are going to be necessary to reverse that trend and what sort of innovative approaches might law firms consider?
Further, Josten and Jones note that while the market for law firm services has been hugely lucrative for the past two years, there potential signs that some of the foundational elements for this success might be shakier than they appear. Should law firm leaders be concerned?
And finally, the pair ask whether the nature of the work done by today’s law firms has fundamentally shifted towards transactional practices and away from litigation, a long-time powerhouse practice focus?
