Law Firm Partner Hourly Rates Rose Last Year at Biggest Clip in at Least a Decade
"Touching partner compensation is the third rail of law firm politics. You don't touch it. It can cause a lot of consequences you're not ready for," said Ken Callander, principal at Value Strategies.
May 22, 2023 at 06:24 PM
6 minute read
Hourly rates for law firm partners jumped 4.5% in 2022, driven in part by law firms' fears of profitability losses from inflation and a drop in M&A activity, according to a report from LexisNexis CounselLink.
The report, based on $52 billion in legal spending across 420,000 timekeepers and 1.4 million legal matters, says that annual percentage increase was the largest since CounselLink put out its first report in 2013.
The largest portion of corporate spending went to partners at the 50 largest firms, those with 750 lawyers or more, where the average partner billed at a 46% higher rate than the next tier of firms with 501-750 lawyers.
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