Co-contributor Mike’s father-in-law Tom Basehart has provided his stash of news articles with tidbits of interest for our readers. Here is a synopsis of the articles he pulled, with some interesting trends—some in line with an improving economy and another not so much with respect to in-house corporate legal business.
Three Elite New York Firms Raise Annual Bonus Ranges For Associates.
Three New York firms—Simpson Thatcher, Paul Weiss, and Cleary Gottlieb–have announced that they would cut checks of between $15,000 to $100,000 for associate attorneys depending on their seniority, as contrasted to 2013 bonuses of $10,000 to $60,000.
More Women Led Law Firms, But Overall Percentages Still Male-Oriented.
Women recently became the first female chairs of such firms as Morgan Lewis and Bryan Cave, joining female leaders at Akin Gump and Quarles & Brady. However, women—while accounting for one-third of U.S. lawyers and judges—make up j
ust 17% of equity partners at the nation’s 200 largest law firms, according to the National Association of Women Lawyers.
More Corporate Law Business Is Staying In-House.
According to a 2014 study by BTI Consulting Group Inc. which interviewed more than 300 corporate counsels, about 58% of larger companies are sending more legal work to their own law departments this year, compared with 50% in 2012—translating to a shift of an estimated $1.1 billion that was previously spent on outside counsel. This year, it is reported that companies and financial institutions will spend $101 billion on legal services in the U.S., but corporate counsel will be spending an estimated $40.9 billion on their internal lawyers this year, a 22% increase since 2011. In a separate poll earlier this year by legal consulting firm Altman Weil Inc., 29% of chief legal officers surveyed in late 2013 said they expected to curtail their overall use of outside attorneys over the 2014 year.