Welcome to Reuters Legal News beta. Please enjoy and provide us with your feedback as we continue to improve the Reuters Legal News experience.
REUTERS/Yuriko Nakao
In looking at the legal trends we’ve seen this year, we see that while law firms have a path to new growth opportunities in 2022, it won’t be an easy one.
As the global pandemic slogs onward, with fresh worries over potential new virus variants and lockdowns, the world’s legal industry continues to battle back, trying to restore something close to normal — in both their working operations and in client services — for the coming year.
Indeed, our research has identified potentially huge opportunities for law firm revenue growth in 2022; however, achieving this will require law firms to carefully target their clients’ needs and align themselves with clients’ strategic priorities by working in close collaboration with general counsel and in-house teams.
Growing optimism
Despite how dismal the legal market may have looked in the early darkest days of the global pandemic, the industry has shown remarkable resilience. In the third quarter of 2021, legal demand hit record year-over-year levels, allowing firms to solidly increase their rates; and productivity levels hit the highest third-quarter numbers seen in three years. Of course, these growth levels mainly are due to the low baselines 2020 created, but demand is up solidly against pre-pandemic 2019, while productivity is only down less than 1% compared to 2019. Still, by nearly all major measures, the third quarter of 2021 was reminiscent of previous high times for the legal industry — not bad for an industry that is just 18 months removed from the depths of the crisis.
As became the norm during much of 2021, corporate clients increasingly sought external expertise to help them navigate these choppy waters, so that now corporate law departments’ typical spend on outside counsel in 2021 is as high as it has ever been — in fact, 35% higher than the typical spend in 2016.
Looking forward, market optimism in legal spending is currently at its strongest point in the last decade. Globally, four in 10 corporate clients are anticipating an increase in legal spending in the coming year; only half as many (20%) are expecting a decrease. This represents the highest proportion predicting an increase and lowest expecting a decrease in the last 10 years.
What does that mean for law firms? Many firms experienced growth across most — although not all — practice areas, with corporate work, especially work involving the red-hot M&A sector, leading the pack. Indeed, even when compared to the last “normal” year of 2019, rather than the low baselines of 2020, corporate work still hit a healthy 11% demand growth among the largest law firms, year to date.
Going forward, many legal market prognosticators say that helping corporate clients manage regulatory uncertainty will be a key growth area as more local and national governments around the world begin to adjust their regulatory requirements to better deal with the lingering problems of the pandemic and some of the compliance issues — such as those involving government fraud and illicit financial schemes — that became all too apparent during the pandemic. A rise in regulation related to environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) issues is also expected. The predicted rise in regulatory issues is evidenced in legal spending predictions being made by corporate clients, with the regulatory practice area predicted to be the strongest growth area in 2022.
What clients want
As corporate clients move out of the worst of the crisis and into what they may see as a new normal in 2022, they will be looking for their external law firms to provide innovative and collaborative solutions to their strategic priorities — as well as help them anticipate challenges and reduce their overall risk. While each corporate law department has its own unique set of challenges, proactive risk mitigation and cost control are the most common themes.
In fact, if you boil down the collective desires that corporate clients have for their external law firms, according to our research, it comes down to three major attributes that law firms should be demonstrating: strategic advising, innovative solutions, and collaborative relationships. And while we have seen some fascinating examples of law firms providing innovative solutions to client challenges, on the whole firms are not landing coordinated, innovative solutions. Thus, going forward, this still represents a massive opportunity for those external law firms that want to differentiate themselves from the competition — if they can get it right.
Further, clients don’t seem to be willing to sit tight and wait for their law firms to figure this all out for themselves. Increasingly, corporate law departments are developing mechanisms to control, monitor, and assess their legal spend and the efficiency of legal service delivery. To this end, expect that 2022 will see corporations putting ever more pressure on their outside law firms to demonstrate higher levels of efficiency and offer more innovative processes around pricing and delivery.
Throughout this past year, corporate clients have seen their legal needs increase, and as a result overall legal spending is expected to remain healthy into 2022; however, that increased share of wallet will only be awarded to those law firms that can demonstrate efficient use of their budgets in helping corporate law departments solve the challenges that they and their organizations face in the coming year.
Opinions expressed are those of the author. They do not reflect the views of Reuters News, which, under the Trust Principles, is committed to integrity, independence, and freedom from bias. Thomson Reuters Institute is owned by Thomson Reuters and operates independently of Reuters News.
Lucy manages the project management and research teams and is responsible for ensuring all projects are delivered on time and to the highest standards. Lucy is skilled in providing high level statistical data analysis and interpretation on client projects, drilling down into the data to uncover underlying trends and correlations. She currently contributes to analysis on Thomson Reuters Acritas’ Sharplegal program and on large-scale projects for clients including insurers Lloyd’s. Lucy graduated from Durham University with a first class honours degree in Chemistry and Mathematics and has subsequently completed an Open University degree conversion in Psychology and an MSc in Social Research Methods.
Subscribe for our daily curated newsletter to receive the latest Reuters legal news and headlines delivered to your inbox.
Reuters, the news and media division of Thomson Reuters, is the world’s largest multimedia news provider, reaching billions of people worldwide every day. Reuters provides business, financial, national and international news to professionals via desktop terminals, the world's media organizations, industry events and directly to consumers.
Build the strongest argument relying on authoritative content, attorney-editor expertise, and industry defining technology.
The most comprehensive solution to manage all your complex and ever-expanding tax and compliance needs.
The industry leader for online information for tax, accounting and finance professionals.
Access unmatched financial data, news and content in a highly-customised workflow experience on desktop, web and mobile.
Browse an unrivalled portfolio of real-time and historical market data and insights from worldwide sources and experts.
Screen for heightened risk individual and entities globally to help uncover hidden risks in business relationships and human networks.
All quotes delayed a minimum of 15 minutes. See here for a complete list of exchanges and delays.
© 2022 Reuters. All rights reserved
Menu
