Solo and small law firms face many challenges — from getting paid to managing time to keeping up with technology — but they do little to address them, according to the 2019 State of U.S. Small Law Firms survey report being released today by Thomson Reuters.
This is the third year TR has surveyed firms of 29 or fewer lawyers, and the results each year have been alarmingly consistent in showing that, while small firms recognize the challenges they face, they show surprisingly little movement in taking action to address them. This closely mirrors the findings of the last survey in 2017.
(See below for links to my articles on the prior years’ surveys.)
The survey’s authors describe the situation as a “persistent lack of action.”
Over the three years of the survey, the challenges small firms identify as their most significant have remained largely the same. As they were last year, their top challenges are acquiring new clients, time spent on administrative tasks, and the increasing complexity of technology.
Yet when asked if they had implemented changes to address the challenges, those who had were in the minority, as the following chart shows. For example, three-quarters of firms (73 percent) say acquiring new business is a moderate or serious challenge, up from 69 percent two years earlier. But less than a third of firms (31 percent) have implemented plans to address the issue — a percentage that has hardly changed over the last two years.
That said, at least some firms have made some changes over the past two years, the survey found. Among them:
45% of firms have adopted new technology. 27% have changed their marketing strategy. Fewer than 20% have changed staffing ratios, practice workflows, or billing practices.
Why make changes? The top
