Boutique Law Firms

Another Boutique Law Firm Joins The Bigtime

Smaller firms are increasingly providing top-quality legal services -- and that requires top-level talent.

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The defining characteristics of late-stage Biglaw are the increasing separation of the Biglaw elite from the rest of the pack and the growing clout of small and boutique law firms that offer high-quality legal services without bringing all the overhead of their Biglaw brethren. The resulting donut leaves the mid-tier Biglaw and midsized law firms in a bind.

It’s a bind those firms try — often unwisely — to merge to create even bigger, even more redundant firms for clients to ignore while the elite firms invade regional markets and put the pinch on the local mainstays. Where this reckoning ends, no one knows.[1]

In any event, this post is about one of those boutique firms that has moved into the complex litigation space, offering clients services that used to be associated exclusively with Biglaw but without all the overhead. Down in Houston, Ahmad, Zavitsanos, Anaipakos, Alavi & Mensing P.C., or AZA as it’s called, announced yesterday that they will be joining the Biglaw starting salary mark of $190K plus a $5K summer bonus.

Founding partner John Zavitsanos was quick to point out that the firm would cover the cost of this raise out of partner profits and that client costs will not be going up. Clients are very touchy about associate raises and the risk that they’ll be forced to pay more for inexperienced attorneys. They lodged this exact same complaint in 2016 and the elite Biglaw firms responded by… raising rates anyway and clients paid them like the dutiful seals that they are.

But boutique firms don’t have the luxury of driving the market the same way the top Biglaw firms can because the whole appeal of a boutique firm is that it can offer top-notch service for less. But they also need to compete directly with the top firms to provide the quality of service that clients demand, so they have to suck up the cost of raises themselves to ensure they maintain their price point and make sure the market knows it. Zavitsanos explained:

We need the best and brightest lawyers here. But we do not want to compromise our clients’ ability to afford us. We want them to have the means to go to trial when that’s what a case demands.

Ironically, the clients have this all backward. They don’t want to pay for associate raises because they don’t want to pay for inexperienced nobodies who provide little value add to the matter. And that’s true in Biglaw, where an associate may be relegated to menial tasks for a couple of years before getting an opportunity to tackle important tasks on their own recognizance. On the other hand, boutique firms routinely empower young associates out of the gate. In announcing yesterday’s raises, Zavitsanos reiterated that AZA is committed to getting its new lawyers to trial in their first year.

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So for all the grumbling, clients willingly pay for inexperienced Biglaw associates while holding the line at fully engaged boutique associates.

The market isn’t always the smartest.

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[1] Just kidding. It ends with the Big 4 Accounting Firms taking over.

HeadshotJoe Patrice is an editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news.

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