Solicitors Legal Costs Under Pressure

Thu, 25 Mar 2010

The UK’s leading law firms are coming under pressure from clients to cut their legal costs according to new research from Sweet and Maxwell . The legal industry has long since been considered a recession proof industry by and large, though the new research would suggest that legal firms are having to contend with bartering from clients, eager to reduce their legal fees in the midst of a recession.

60 per cent of financial directors at the UK’s top 100 law firms who were consulted as part of the research admitted that clients, including banks and large corporate companies, were applying pressure for the firms to reduce their fees. Some solicitors and lawyers now work on a fixed fee basis, instead of the traditional hourly billing costing, with many financial directors citing the extra costs incurred when performing fixed cost work as a drain on profits.

Managing partner at Berwin Leighton Paisner, Neville Eisenberg, commented that the extra pressure from clients represented a significant challenge to the profitability of law firms, but insisted that the onus was on the legal industry to locate innovative means of maintain both standards and profit margins.
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