Ever since the Great Recession, law firms have seen both the supply of available legal work and the demand for their services dwindle.
According to Altman Weil’s 2014 Chief Legal Officer Survey (PDF), those trends are continuing and show no signs of abatement. The study revealed that in-house legal departments are keeping more legal matters for themselves and are demanding heavy discounts for the work they give to outside counsel.
Of the 186 CLO’s to respond to Altman Weil’s survey, 40 percent of them had shifted work during the past year away from outside counsel in favor of keeping the matters in-house. Meanwhile, more than a quarter of responding law departments said they would decrease their use of outside counsel in 2015, compared to only 14 percent that are planning an increase.
“This continues a seven-year survey trend in which decreases in the use of outside counsel have been reported at about twice the rate of increases,” the report states.
