Law firm managing partners showed slightly more confidence in the legal industry in the third quarter compared with the previous quarter, according to the latest survey by the Citi Private Bank Law Firm Group. However, their concern about the sustainability of growing demand for legal services as well as increasing price discounting pressure continues to mount, contrasting their hopeful outlook on profits.
The survey, released late last month, found the strong growth in optimism about profits to be the result of both expectations for steady expense control and generally positive projections for increasing revenues. Nonetheless, Gretta Rusanow, senior client adviser at Citibank, says that behind these numbers, there is wide dispersion in confidence levels of individual firms in all tiers, reflecting drastically different experiences this year.
