Nearly a half-decade since the economy began to emerge from the Great Recession, the mood of the legal industry remains unsettled: That’s the takeaway from The American Lawyer’s 12th annual Law Firm Leaders Survey. Although respondents expressed optimism, they said they were constantly tweaking their practices, technology platforms and staffing mixes to better position themselves in an ever more competitive environment. “One thing the financial crisis did was create a need for law firms to accelerate their own innovation and efficiency that gets people out of their comfort zones,” says Paul Hastings chairman Seth Zachary.
Each year, The American Lawyer gauges the sentiments of Am Law 200 managing partners in an anonymous survey that covers a variety of topics pertaining to their firms and the legal industry. This year, 78 percent of the survey’s 100 respondents described themselves as somewhat optimistic about 2015. Additionally, 66 percent of survey respondents characterized the morale of their partnership as somewhat optimistic. Meanwhile, 12 percent of respondents—the largest percentage ever—said they were very optimistic, and 7 percent described their partnership as very optimistic. This optimism has been a staple of the survey’s results in recent years. [See our chart of highlight from this year's survey.]
