Credit: ZenZen/Adobe Stock High Billing Rates May Hasten New Era of Productivity
"The way the market is structured and has been structured for a long time, it's not really a question of growing productivity, it's how do we mitigate the contraction of productivity?" said Bill Josten, strategic content manager for Thomson Reuters.
May 10, 2024 at 06:00 AM
5 minute read
What You Need to Know
- Legal industry experts already know the number of hours billed isn't a be-all, end-all metric.
- Record billing rate increases are giving firms less reason to worry about an era of low productivity.
- Although AI-enabled work is already occurring, the technology has yet to make a material impact on lawyer productivity.
Lawyer productivity in law firms appears to have plateaued around roughly 1,550 hours, down from its high-water mark in 2021, according to Wells Fargo data. But analysts don't expect a wave of layoffs as a result of overcapacity and lower utilization.
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Michael G. Bongiorno, Andrew Scott Dulberg and Elizabeth E. Driscoll from Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr have stepped in to represent Symbotic Inc., an A.I.-enabled technology platform that focuses on increasing supply chain efficiency, and other defendants in a pending shareholder derivative lawsuit. The case, filed Oct. 2 in Massachusetts District Court by the Brown Law Firm on behalf of Stephen Austen, accuses certain officers and directors of misleading investors in regard to Symbotic's potential for margin growth by failing to disclose that the company was not equipped to timely deploy its systems or manage expenses through project delays. The case, assigned to U.S. District Judge Nathaniel M. Gorton, is 1:24-cv-12522, Austen v. Cohen et al.
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