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Law Firm Performance 2004 ' Highlights

By Kenneth Hildebrandt
November 30, 2004

During the past 2 years, we often heard the dire predictions about the profession that seem to accompany every downturn in the business cycle:

  • “Corporate work will never come back to pre-recession levels.”
  • “The tech firms will never recover.”
  • “Hourly rates cannot continue to rise.”
  • “Associate salaries will not increase as they did in the pre-recession period.”

Frankly, we never believed there was much truth in any of these conclusions. The simple fact is that, when all is said and done, law firms ' like most industries ' follow fairly predictable business cycles. For the past 2 years, the legal industry has gone through an economic downturn, but there is every indication that we are now back in a growth phase, with all that entails. Moreover, the profession came through the recent recession in very good shape.

Economic Performance

For the industry as a whole, the economic performance of law firms in 2004 was quite good. Indeed, given the overall state of the national economy and the dire early predictions of some pundits, the performance of the industry was remarkable. Much of this positive performance was, of course, attributable to the continuing strength of litigation practices as well as, to a lesser extent, bankruptcy and reorganization activity. For many small and mid-sized firms, the robust real estate market spurred by low interest rates also contributed to positive results in 2004. But the performance is impressive nonetheless.

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