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Despite Aggressive Rate Increases from Law Firms, Clients Have Room to Negotiate

By Andrew Maloney
March 01, 2023

The Am Law 100 showed wide disparity in billing rate increases last year, depending on the law firm and the practice area, from hiking up rates by more than 20% to almost no increases.

Some law firms are expected to continue aggressive rate increases this year, analysts said. But rate increases across the legal industry haven't been as big as the conventional wisdom implies, and clients have more room to negotiate than they probably realize, according to the latest LegalVIEW Insights report from Wolters Kluwer ELM Solutions. See, https://bit.ly/3YMqaIH.

"Just talking to our clients in banking and finance, they're saying the law firms are coming at them with huge rate increases, but then coming down," said Nathan Cemenska, director of legal operations and industry insights for ELM Solutions. "They [law firms] are doing distributive bargaining, where they name a big number and then it gets whittled down from there. So the question is really, how much is the client willing to push back?"

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