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Twice a year the CounselLink team analyzes big data looking for trends in the legal market. In addition to the macro legal spending trends – that is high-level findings in the Enterprise Legal Management Trends Report – published recently, the team also looks at a set of six key metrics.
Those metrics are rendered in the form of a “scorecard” like the one you see above and cover a standard set of benchmarks for hourly legal rates and is embedded nearby. The goal is to monitor those key findings over time – the previous edition of the score card can be found here.
Keep in mind the data is based on actual invoices processed, rather than survey data. Two of the key metrics designated on the scorecard nearby include:
- Partner hourly rates by practice area:
- Commercial and contracts: $600
- Corporate, general and tax: $549
- Regulatory and compliance: $485
- IP trademark: $456
- Finance, loans and investments: $450
- Hourly rates by law firm size as measured by the number of attorneys:
- 1-50: $250
- 51-100: $325
- 101-200: $310
- 201-500: $381
- 501-750: $490
- 750+: $675
- New perspective on alternative fee arrangement (AFA) adoption:
- Key metric #3 demonstrates that AFA adoption has remained stable at 9% of matters and 7% of billings. However, as the report states, “data reveals that the number of legal departments engaging in alternative fee arrangements with their law firms is increasing. Three quarters (3/4) of companies used alternative fee arrangements in 2014. The percentage of CounselLink customers engaging in alternative fee arrangements has increased from 59% in 2011 to 76% in 2014.”
An infographic visualizing the macro trends in the report can be viewed here; the full report, which is well worth a read, can be downloaded at no cost with registration at the same link.
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