Biglaw, In-House Counsel

Stat Of The Week: Biglaw Bill Rates Creep Up Again 

Legal spending pressure notwithstanding. 

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For corporate law departments, “doing more with less” became a pandemic-era cliche, as many faced the combination of increasing legal challenges and reduced organizational revenue. 

While this led to a heightened focus on legal operations in 2020, a new survey shows that it also failed to slow the continued rise of Biglaw billing rates.

According to the Enterprise Legal Management Trends Report from LexisNexis’ CounselLink, partner hourly rates at U.S. law firms grew 3.5% in 2020 — a slightly faster rate than the 3.3% increase from 2018-19. 

The report also showed the 50 largest firms again taking a “commanding share” of this work, with 49% of outside counsel spending going to this group.

The report wasn’t all bad news for budget-conscious GCs, however. 

The use of alternative fee arrangements also continued its steady growth for corporate counsel, with 16.8% of matters having a billing arrangement not entirely composed of hourly billing. 

As the report notes: “The percentage of alternative fee arrangements (AFAs) has been gradually rising over the years. It is noteworthy that in 2020, AFAs were utilized for more than 10% of matters in each major practice area except Commercial, which billed 9.9% of matters under an AFA in 2020.” 

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Enterprise Legal Management Trends Report [CounselLink]

Jeremy Barker is the director of content marketing for Breaking Media. Feel free to email him with questions or comments and to connect on LinkedIn. 

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