Excerpt:
The new year could thaw a rate freeze affecting law firms.
Local legal shops generally look to be in line with a 3.2 percent average rate raise projected for 2010, according to a new survey from Altman Weil Inc., a Philadelphia-area consulting firm.
Altman Weil polled 688 firms with at least 50 lawyers in November, and received 288 completed surveys, including 45 percent of the largest firms in the country.
The big dogs — firms of more than 1,000 lawyers still struggling to find traction in a time of
layoffs and cost-cutting — appear ready to try to offset some losses with a rate bump of around 4 percent.
...
Alternative billing structures make it difficult to pinpoint a hard rate number.
Case in point: Only 13 percent of the Altman Weil survey respondents said they expected across-the-board increases. In most instances, there are just too many moving parts.
“All law firms are seeing requests for alternative billing rates, caps, flat fees, etc.,” says Meyerhoff of Baker & McKenzie.
Click to read the rest of "Houston law firms plan rate bumps" (Houston Business Journal - subscription required).
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