Significant shifts in US law firm market pose challenges: Thomson Reuters report

Shifting market factors include:

• Legal work continues to move down-market towards smaller firms as clients seek greater efficiency and better value-to-cost balance
• Clients are increasingly enforcing budget caps and outside counsel guidelines to reduce costs
• Transactional practices, which fueled much of the legal market’s growth in recent years, have seen demand slowing in favor of counter-cyclical practices
• Rapidly rising rates are being offset by lower realization and higher expenses, challenging profitability, although expense growth is slowing

The report concludes that the more successful law firms are those that adjust to the new market realities faster than their competitors.

“Significant changes in the legal market have been under way since 2007, but many of these effects were masked by the strong demand for transactional services during the decade from 2011 through 2019, a period marked by sustained low interest rates that encouraged commercial activity,” said James W. Jones, a senior fellow at the Center on Ethics and the Legal Profession at Georgetown Law and the report's lead author. “The challenge facing law firm leaders in today’s more volatile market is that many of these changes are now accelerating and may require fundamental changes to how legal work is conducted, how legal services are delivered, and how law firms conduct their business operations.”

The outlook for 2024 is positive, the report concludes, as corporate work is expected to rebound slightly. Among corporate general counsel, 40% expect to increase outside legal spend, while only 18% expect it to decrease. At the same time, direct expenses continue to be a burden on firms’ bottom lines. Although attorney salary scales have stabilized following intense competition for talent in 2021 and 2022, the normalization of associate salaries may be short-lived, and another round of sizable salary increases may be in the offing in 2024.

One of the biggest potential changes facing the legal market is generative AI. The report notes that while law firms have used AI for a long time, rapidly evolving generative AI and large language model tools could have a massive impact on lawyer headcount, law firm service delivery, pricing, and many other aspects of their operations.

The 2024 Report on the State of the US Legal Market lays out three hypothetical scenarios of the impact generative AI could have on law firms.

• It significantly enhances both client value and law firm profits by increasing efficiency and reducing costs for firms, and enabling higher-quality advice, faster service, and more creative solutions
• Clients derive a disproportionate share of the benefits of generative AI by getting greater leverage in competitive pricing and an increased ability to bring work in-house
• Generative AI finds utility in law firm areas such as knowledge management and search, as well as operations, marketing, IT and HR, but does not significantly alter current legal practices or firm-client relationships