Employers

Big Law’s huge fee hikes kicked-off the conversation around cost-effectiveness.

Investment fund practices for Big Law have not seen the decline that has affected mergers and acquisitions this year, with lawyers from top fund law firms saying things are as busy and competitive as ever.

Law firm associate turnover has hit near-record levels in 2021 in the midst of an explosive amount of corporate demand and lawyer burnout. Also, at the same time, partner attrition has dropped to low levels within firms, according to new figures that suggest that partners may have seen too much client work to focus on looking for a job.

Law firm hiring has fully returned to pre-pandemic levels, and the average compensation has continued an upward trajectory at summer associate programs in New Jersey firms and branch offices. 

Florida has the fourth largest economy in the country and given that there is a lot of legal work coming down the pipe, these next few years are poised to boom due to many factors. 

Legal associate lateral hiring jumped 149% from 2020 to 2021 as law firms compete against each other to recruit and retain the best talent.

Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, law firm managing partners have advocated for the necessity of bringing attorneys back into the office, especially to be able to mentor the next generation of lawyers and protect their firm’s culture. While firms have developed hybrid work models, these leaders are about to find out whether lawyers value their law firm’s culture and mentorship over the ability to remote work. 

The largest law firms in New York elevated a large number of new partners over the last year, after promotions slowed down in the previous 12-month period that intersected  with the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

In order to understand how law firm leaders from the largest firms in the U.S. are currently navigating the competitive market for legal talent, a tech company called Thine, that develops and deploys pre-hiring and integration assessments, engaged Ari Kaplan Advisors to interviews wide variety of professionals making decisions about hiring, development, and promotion in AmLaw 100 law firms. For this research, Ari Kaplan had the chance to interview 30 chief talent officers along with directors and managers of recruiting between Sept. 3 and Nov. 24 last year. 

The global pandemic helped to guide a new wave of remote working—and given the rise of the Omicron variant, that trend seems unlikely to change any time soon.