Trends in Legal Markets: Are Smaller Markets on the Rise?

Description

• Harrison discusses the impact of recessions on the legal market, with larger firms experiencing slower work and smaller firms experiencing growth.
• During recessions, clients may opt for smaller firms with lower billing rates.
• Harrison advises job seekers to consider opportunities outside of major cities and in smaller markets for long-term employment stability and other advantages.
• Despite the allure of working for big firms, there are hidden opportunities in suburban and smaller firms

Transcript

Transcript:

What happens during recessions? It's always happened in 2008 or 2011, there was a massive recession in the US, in the legal market. We had offices in San Francisco, New York and Chicago, for the most part it had really slowed down. What happens during recessions is the firms in the big markets always have high billing rates. So their clients a lot of times, instead of sending work to the firms of the highest billing rates, we'll send a lot of their work to their smaller firms that tend to be in suburbs or smaller markets. Those market, those firms actually experience growth many times in terms of the volume of work.

The best piece of advice I can give you is you start looking outside of major cities and in smaller markets. Now that's not to say there isn't working major markets. There's all sorts of firms that are off that people don't know. Think about it strategically in big markets, the biggest firms are laying people off.

So all those attorneys are applying to the same big firms, all egos and stuff are connected to working for these big firms. So they don't think about firms in the suburbs and all this other stuff, even though it might be more long-term employment stability and all sorts of advantages to doing that.

I've always thought that to me it's a no-brainer, but that's what I would do and it works.