Surprise surprise .. Above The Law tells it like it is…..
We’re glad that somebody agrees with us .. no amount of positive sentiment from managing partners can detract from the fact that as ATL say…….
Just to be clear, the first quarter of 2009 was not the beginning of the great recovery everybody is hoping for. AmLaw Daily reports that Q1 revenue fell on average at 175 law firms:
They were right to be concerned. Citi’s first-quarter 2009 Flash Report indicates that revenues at the 175 firms that provided data were down 3.7 percent from first-quarter 2008, a period that was not particularly robust. Demand at those firms declined 6 percent from year-previous levels. The first-quarter 2009 Flash Report includes results from 71 Am Law 100 firms, 50 Second Hundred firms, and 54 smaller firms.
Citi Private Bank provides financial services to more than 600 law firms in the United States and the United Kingdom. Each quarter, the Law Firm Group confidentially surveys firms in The Am Law 100 and the Second Hundred, along with smaller firms. In addition, we conduct a more detailed financial survey. These reports, together with extensive discussions with law firm management conducted on an ongoing basis, provide a comprehensive overview of financial trends in the industry and insight into where it is headed.
Even more disturbingly, the revenue drop was more pronounced at top firms than the rest of the sample:
On a more granular level, our most recent data shows that Am Law 100 firms were hit harder than the broader sample: For them, revenues and demand fell 5.0 percent and 7.0 percent, respectively (versus 3.7 percent and 6.0 percent for the full sample). In fact, Second Hundred firms actually saw a modest increase of 1.1 percent in revenues and a smaller drop of 1.8 percent in demand. Clearly, those firms with heavy reliance on transactional work and clients who are more heavily weighted in financial services are feeling the pain more deeply.
This seems like a good time to mention that, over the same period, tuition costs at top law schools dropped dramatically stayed exactly the same. As Kanye West might say: "law schools don’t care about broke ass graduates suffering through the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression."
Full article at http://abovethelaw.com/2009/05/first_quarter_2009_it_still_st.php
