Newsflash: Legal Industry Shrinking
The Legal Marketing Blog commented today on Tuesday's ABA Journal online article reporting that corporate legal departments cut spending for the first time in 10 years. This is not news to Mississippi attorneys, who have been struggling with a recession in the legal industry for approximately six years.
LMB states:
What it all means is that law firms are going to have to get real smart, real fast when it comes to project management. With a reduction in spending by legal departments, two things are going to happen:
- Smaller and mid-size firms will pick up more work that normally was done by larger firms, simply because they can do it cheaper and just as effectively in most cases; and
- Larger firms are going to be adopting project management religion very quickly, so that they can do the work more efficiently and effectively on less dollars, if there is any hope of maintaining their standard of living.
That creates important marketing and business development opportunities for firms that understand the ramifications of lower legal spending levels.
If what has happened in Mississippi is any indication, it also means fewer jobs for lawyers and their support staff and less pay for those with jobs. Support staff are often ignored when this topic comes up, but the legal recession affects the families of a lot of support staff who are not lawyers.
How law schools can continue to increase class sizes in this climate is beyond me. The notion that a law degree has value independent of a legal career may be correct. But the statement in a vacuum is misleading. An empty aluminum can on the side of the road has value. But you shouldn't go tens of thousands of dollars (or more) into debt to acquire that value.
