A recent Law 360 story by Sue Reisinger, “GC Cheat Sheet: The Hottest Corporate News of the Week,” reports that, as several law firms have significantly increased their rates over the past year amid a slowing economy, the relative silence from corporate clients has been deafening.  Law 360 columnist Aebra Coe writes that based on her experience covering the legal industry during the fallout of the last economic downturn, the level of "meh" reactions around the increases is a major shift from the volume of outcry we heard from in-house legal during the 2010s.

So fast-forward to today.  Released at the end of May, the LexisNexis CounselLink 2023 trends report found that timekeeper rates grew on average 4.5% in 2022, the highest level the enterprise legal management platform had recorded since it first produced the report in 2013.  According to CounselLink, average partner billing rates at law firms with 750 or more lawyers increased from $656 in 2015 to $895 at the end of 2021, an increase of 36%.

And yet, Coe doesn't think we've seen the same revolutionary spirit in-house that we saw a decade ago.  Some structural changes are at play, including reducing the number of outside counsel used by legal departments, adopting alternative fee arrangements, using legal technology, outsourcing some lower-level tasks to alternative service providers, taking some work in-house, and making use of data to ensure outside counsel are performing to a high standard and providing value for the money.