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Online Extra: 'Across-the-Board' Cost Increases Expected To Have Major Impact On 2024 Legal Ops
Although the inflation rate is down, law firms are still fighting "across-the-board" cost increases, including for talent and technology, as well as overhead costs for occupancy. Those costs are expected to have an outsize influence on law firm operations going into 2024.
The rising costs are one factor in firms' decisions to push through relatively high billing rate increases again in 2024, as well as the decision by some firms to pull back on business development, training, and perhaps recruiting and associate promotions, some analysts and consultants say.
A constellation of economic factors since the pandemic, including inflation and higher financing costs, have continued to push up expenses for law firms. Although Am Law 100 firms, in particular, have tried to control costs this year by trimming their rosters, direct costs were still up about 7% last quarter relative to Q2 of last year and overhead was up about 8%, according to the most recent Law Firm Financial Index report from Thomson Reuters.
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