Significant changes have occurred within the legal profession during the last decade. Law firms are experiencing the same wrenching changes that their corporate and business clients have endured. Today, lawyers practice in a buyer’s market. Lawyers and most of the services they offer are plentiful. Buyers of legal services have a wide range of choices.
Corporate counsel are exercising increased bargaining power about fees and terms of employment of outside law firms. They are employing qualified lawyers, who are not necessarily the most expensive, to perform legal work in a quality, efficient and cost-effective manner, as opposed to referring all legal work requiring outside assistance to their “traditional” law firm. Also, smaller businesses without outside counsel, and individuals, find it advantageous to “shop” for lawyers. In fact, lawyers who solicit and utilize other marketing techniques and alternative billing arrangements may find many disenchanted clients of other firms receptive to the idea of changing lawyers.
