Earlier this week, the practice management provider Clio released its first-ever Legal Trends Report and it is a treasure trove of insight. Clio mined — aggregated and anonymized — data from their approximately 40,000 active users to reveal trends concerning everything from utilization (i.e. amount of time billed) to collection (i.e. bills actually paid), all segmented by geographic market, practice area, and time of year (“seasonality”). The report holds many interesting findings, but one that jumped out was the relative billable rates by practice:
The chart might be a little tough to read (you can click it to enlarge), but bankruptcy practitioners’ billables are at the far right, with an average of about $260. This is presumably attributable to the fact that the Bankruptcy Code makes sure that lawyers get paid off the top. But it provides an interesting contrast to the far left, where we learn yet again that crime doesn’t pay (lawyers much).
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Brian Dalton is the director of research for Breaking Media. Feel free to email him with any questions or comments.