Not bad as financial apocalypses go
If law firms’ willingness to talk financial results is an indication of performance, then 2008-09 is certainly a very different year compared to what leading law firms have become used to. So while in a typical year, you have already seen a good selection of numbers by this point, this year it has taken Legal Week’s entire news team to open the batting. Still, the general picture seems reasonably clear: major firms as a whole are set to be down in revenue against 2008, perhaps as much as 5%, while average profits will have fallen in the region of 15%. That’s dramatically down on the growth seen over the last 15 years, with top 50 firms even in their TMT-hangover of 2002-03 managing revenue growth of 5.1%.
