Countercyclical is a word regularly attached to litigation. Nothing busies a litigator quite like a recession, a pandemic, or stark political shifts. The signal now is that, after a fruitful pandemic-fuelled stretch of big cases, and coupled with the advent of the disputes boutique, the mood in large private practices is softening slightly.
Disputes between companies and institutions, though succumbing to the natural peaks and troughs of the rippling global economy, will never die away. But to offset the challenges posed by sudden market shifts, such as over- or under-capacity, what a law firm needs is a means to diversify away from traditional cases.
