All too often, we think of the legal market, especially for law firms, as being composed of BigLaw or at least lawyers that bill by the hour.
The truth is, though, that today’s legal marketplace is composed of various segments. These segments have business models and goals that are so different that they might as well be thought of as separate types of businesses entirely.
The trend toward increase diversification and segmentation in legal was brought home to me in a couple of conversations this week. The first was with Kris Satunkas. Satunkas is the Director of Strategic Consulting for CounselLink.
The CounselLink 2022 Report: The Rich Get Richer
I talked to her about the new LexisNexis® CounselLink® 2022 Enterprise Legal Management Trends report. LexisNexis CounselLink is a cloud-based enterprise legal management program for corporate law departments.
According to CounselLink, the Trends Report, now in its 9th year, provides insights into seven metrics. These metrics all impact corporate legal decision-making. The Report leverages data based on more than $49 billion in legal spend across 350,000 timekeepers, 8 million invoices, and over 1.2 million matters. CounselLink collects and analyzes this data from the invoices it processes. The most recent CounselLink Report examined 2021 data on billing rates and growth.
The key findings of the recently released Report, according to Satunkas:
On average, 2021 hourly partner rates of those in the 50 largest law firms (those with more than 750 lawyers) increased by 3.4%, compared to 3.5% growth in 2020. This growth was despite in-house legal’s often professed interest in controlling legal spend and holding down costs. The Largest 50 firms (those with more than 750n lawyers) continue to account for the largest share of legal spend. In 2021, 46% of outside counsel spend