Co-contributor Mike’s father-in-law Tom Basehart has provided his stash of news articles with tidbits of interest for our readers. Here is a synopsis of the articles he pulled, with some interesting trends—some in line with an improving economy and another not so much with respect to in-house corporate legal business.
Three Elite New York Firms Raise Annual Bonus Ranges For Associates.
Three New York firms—Simpson Thatcher, Paul Weiss, and Cleary Gottlieb--have announced that they would cut checks of between $15,000 to $100,000 for associate attorneys depending on their seniority, as contrasted to 2013 bonuses of $10,000 to $60,000.
More Women Led Law Firms, But Overall Percentages Still Male-Oriented.
Women recently became the first female chairs of such firms as Morgan Lewis and Bryan Cave, joining female leaders at Akin Gump and Quarles & Brady. However, women—while accounting for one-third of U.S. lawyers and judges—make up j
ust 17% of equity partners at the nation’s 200 largest law firms, according to the National Association of Women Lawyers.
More Corporate Law Business Is Staying In-House.
According to a 2014 study by BTI Consulting Group Inc. which interviewed more than 300 corporate counsels, about 58% of larger companies are sending more legal work to their own law departments this year, compared with 50% in 2012—translating to a shift of an estimated $1.1 billion that was previously spent on outside counsel. This year, it is reported that companies and financial institutions will spend $101 billion on legal services in the U.S., but corporate counsel will be spending an estimated $40.9 billion on their internal lawyers this year, a 22% increase since 2011. In a separate poll earlier this year by legal consulting firm Altman Weil Inc., 29% of chief legal officers surveyed in late 2013 said they expected to curtail their overall use of outside attorneys over the 2014 year.
Comments