Today’s Recorder contains an article about 2010 revenues and profits at eight Northern California based law firms.  It also reports on interviews with some of the firms’ leaders about what they are expecting for the future. 

Read the whole thing here.  Notably, head count at six out of the eight firms dropped in 2010. 

One highlight:

“Extreme caution about hiring remains the rule – even at firms like Morrison & Foerster, where revenue per lawyer was up a healthy 6 percent. Chairman Keith Wetmore said MoFo’s biggest challenge was aligning head count with work levels. ‘We’re being very careful not to let groups hire ahead of demand,’ he said. ‘We’ve also managed costs and staff head count aggressively, not replacing people when they leave, restricting travel costs and revisiting our marketing and tech budgets.’”

The latest annual Hildebrandt/Citibank Client Advisory is out.  We’ve posted about the Client Advisories before (see here). 

You can access the whole report here.

Among other things, it predicts:

• continued sluggish demand for legal services on the part of corporate clients
• associate recruitment goals have stabilized at levels much lower than in pre-recession years and are likely to remain there for the foreseeable future.

The National Law Journal recently conducted a roundtable with 3 managing partners at large DC-based firms.  They talked about staffing, rates, client demands, lateral recruiting, the political landscape and the future of the legal business model.   A summary of the discussion appears here.   

You should read the whole thing, but a few highlights:

• IP litigation was unexpectedly slow in 2010, but is expected to increase in 2011
• things have stabilized, but not likely to get significantly better in 2011
• the expected increase in the government regulatory area did not materialize and the results of the mid-term elections suggest that it may never materialize
• no one is expecting layoffs and salaries and bonuses have been — and are expected to continue to be — unfrozen
• clients are expected to continue exerting pricing pressures; the billable hour will not disappear, but the use of alternative fee arrangements will continue to increase
• we can expect to see a continuing of the trend of increased merger activity and lateral movement by partners and practice groups to competitors 

NALP, the Association of Legal Career Professionals, just released its annual analysis of the use of part-time schedules by lawyers at law firms. 

The headlines are that part-time lawyers remain the exception and that their ranks are comprised mostly of women.  However, the number of male partners practicing part-time “edge[d] up.”

The well-known legal business consulting firm Hildebrandt Baker Robbins just published a report of its Peer Monitor Index, which includes information about key law firm business metrics for July - September of 2010.

You can read a summary of the report here.  You can read the whole thing here.   

Among other things, the report shows that — very much in line with how the overall economy performed in Q 3 — the market (at least for large law firm legal services) lost a bit (but, by no means, all) of the ground it (ever so slowly) was gaining over the previous several months. 

Demand for services was down 1% over last year.  Productivity [hours per attorney] actually fell by .4%, which reversed a recent trend of modest increases (though the rate of increase showed some slowing in the previous quarter).  The gains in the previous quarters had largely been due to headcount reductions.  The report summary states:

“Reduced productivity is pressuring firm profitability and may cause firms to re-evaluate their hiring patterns in the face of weak demand and pricing. This is particularly relevant because many previously deferred new associates are scheduled to begin work in early 2011.”

We’ve regularly blogged about the Peer Monitor system before (click here to view the most recent prior post), but to refresh you , it is a service that allows law firms to access their peers’ financial data (in the aggregate) in exchange for supplying their own data to the system for others to access (on a normalized and aggregated basis).  There are 35 Am Law 100 firms, 35 Am Law 200 firms and 30 NLJ 250 firms in the system.  You can find more information about the Peer Monitor system here.

A thought-provoking blog post from law firm management consultant Hildebrandt.

Last year, we linked to a couple of articles (here and here) reporting that (at least some) midsize firms (100-300 attorneys) appeared to be weathering the economic downturn better than their Biglaw counterparts.

However, according to the Hildebrandt blogger (and we agree!), just as large law firms have had to adapt their business model to new economic realities, midsize firms have to make some big changes as well.  Hildebrandt’s blog post suggests what those changes may look like.    

A marathon, not a sprint.

A good, if not cheery summary of the current state of the U.S. economy appeared in Wednesday’s NY Times.  Read it and next time you get an email from the CDO with a sentence that begins “In this economy . . .” you’ll know exactly what we mean.  

The Careerist blog had an interesting post with some advice for lawyers who have been out of the workforce for awhile (perhaps to help raise a family) and want to re-enter. 

Today’s Recorder contains an article written by a partner in Covington & Burling’s SF office who predicts that the SEC will ramp up its enforcement activities as a result of new powers conferred by the  Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. 

Unfortunately, the article is password-protected, so you will need to get the print version either in the CDO or in the main library.

But, the career-related take-away for us is that we can expect the SEC to be busier than ever (as well as the law firms that do SEC enforcement work and/or those that have securities litigation practices and/or those that represent financial services clients).

As the article concludes:

“Dodd-Frank has ramped up the SEC’s enforcement mandates to a level greater than at any time since the agency was created. Its jurisdictional reach is broader, the number of causes of action it can bring has increased, and its available remedies have expanded. Public companies, regulated entities and hedge funds, as well as their officers, directors and employees, should prepare for a significant increase in SEC enforcement activity.”