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Today the Standards Advancement for the Legal Industry (SALI) Alliance  announced the official release of Legal Matter Specifications Standard LMSS 2.0. The enhancement expands the taxonomy to almost 10,000 categories or tags which  provide a granular analysis of  legal market services. As firms ramp up their Business Intelligence activities the SALI tags can be a powerful tool for pricing and competitive insights.

“LMSS 2.0 is, quite simply, innovation in the legal industry at its finest. It is the culmination of countless hours generously volunteered by professionals in law firms, technology companies, service providers, educational institutions, and clients in different roles, pursuing the same vision,” notes Toby Brown, co-founder of The SALI Alliance and Chief Practice Management Officer at Perkins Coie. “A common language for the legal industry is powerful for all of these parties, from legal operations to business development, pricing, knowledge management, and overall law firm business operations. Standardized data is critical to all of these efforts.”

Congratulations to all the professionals and organizations which devoted time to this initiative which will benefit the entire legal market around the globe.

Here is the full press release:Continue Reading SALI Releases LMSS 2.0 A Powertool Driving Legal Market Analysis and Insights

Thomson Reuters Institute and the Center for Ethics and the Legal Profession at Georgetown University have released the 2022 Report on the State of the Legal Market: A challenging road to recovery. Law firms are throwing a lot of money at the talent problem and it may not be paying off… in fact history suggests that it may destroy some firms.  The report underscores the fact that many lawyers value “intangibles more than money” — and yet law firms continue succumb to the compensation “arms race.”

Are you at a “Stay Firm or a “Go” Firm? The report indicates that some law firms may lose almost 25% of their legal talent in a year. Ironically “stay” firms may pay less and have associates that work longer hours. Here is an enlightening chart comparing talent issues at
Continue Reading 2022 Report on The State of the Legal Market – Stop Throwing Money at the Talent War!

This week Thomson Reuters Institute and Georgetown Law Center on Ethics and the Legal Profession released their 2021 Report on the State of the Legal Market. It is always an interesting read but this year offered  a petri dish for the transformation of law firms in real time.  2020 was a perfect storm of pandemic, financial uncertainty, social change and political stress.
The Report adopts the theme of Malcolm Gladwell‘s meme-able book The Tipping Point. Contrary to the popular assumption that social change happens slowly and steadily over a period of time Gladwell argues with a metaphor that is equally appropriate for our present circumstances that in many cases change happens more like an epidemic. As he puts it ideas and products and messages and behavior spread like viruses do. Although forces of change may build slowly often a a singular set of circumstances triggers a profound change. The 2020 Report examines whether law firms have reached such a tipping point.
Growth in Profits Per Equity Partner
Some of the data  points highlighted  in the report :

Continue Reading 2021 State of the Legal Market Report – A Tipping Point For Law Firm Transformation?

We all knew that law libraries were shrinking. No one suspected that they would be totally “done in” by a virus. Law libraries have been “going digital” for at least 20 years, but few firms tossed out their last “pocket part” update. But as firms plan their post-pandemic re-openings, retaining a collection of shared books is frankly a biohazard. Should librarians develop systems for sanitizing and quarantining books? In today’s digital world -– is it even worth the trouble? 

Does anyone really want to take on the backlog of updating books that are nine months out of date next January when lawyers begin returning to offices?

For the past two decades, many law librarians have been assessing products and developing in-house solutions to support virtual library resources.  

There is no universal solution. The law firms which have the foresight to invest in strategic information professionals are most likely  to have had substantial digital libraries in place last March when COVID-19 brought the world to a screeching halt. Many firms are running parallel digital and print libraries because they are supporting both the last of the “baby boomer partners” and the “born digital” generation of lawyers. COVID-19 has been an unprecedented tipping point which exposes the importance of completing or starting a digital library transition plan.  

  12 Building Blocks Of A Digital Library  

Continue Reading 12 Tips For Building Your Digital Law Library In The Age Of COVID-19

American Lawyer Media (or more precisely, Steven Brill the founder of the American Lawyer) pioneered the collection of law firm data in the mid-1980’s with the publication of the first Amlaw 100 list.  For better or for worse, the  ALM rankings have driven decision making in the legal market for almost 40 years. I wrote an historical review of ALM in the last time ALM was sold to an investor consortium the Wasserstein Group in 2014 . I am happy to see that the new owners have demonstrated an ongoing commitment to leveraging ALM’s unique data assets to help law firms navigate
Continue Reading American Lawyer Media Releases Law Firm Merger and Lateral Modeling Tool: Let the Scenario Planning Begin