Strategy & Leadership

A new verdict

March 26, 2018

Global

March 26, 2018

Global
Kevin Plumberg

Contributor

Kevin was a member of The Economist Intelligence Unit’s Thought Leadership team in North America and is based in San Francisco. From 2014-2017, he was based in The Economist’s Singapore office and led multi-year integrated content programmes such as Growth Crossings, a series about the new rules of global trade, and the Producers of Tomorrow, an initiative about the future of manufacturing. Prior to joining the EIU, he spent two years as Vice President, Institutional Marketing at BlackRock, the world’s largest asset management company. In that role, he produced and edited white papers, website articles and newsletters aimed at some of Asia’s biggest institutional investors. Kevin also spent 10 years as a journalist covering financial markets, economics and policy for Reuters in Singapore, Hong Kong and New York. As a correspondent and editor, he covered the global financial crisis from Wall Street and its aftermath in Asia, where he led market-moving coverage of the region’s economic policymakers.

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Frustration with high legal fees and demand for local regulatory knowledge may give boutique law firms an edge with larger clients.

Large companies have regularly hired large law firms and kept them on retainer to address legal needs as they arise. However, with legal expenditure continuing to rise, largely because of higher billing rates, some in-house lawyers are reconsidering how they choose and partner with outside firms. In 2016 partners at elite law firms were charging as much as US$1,500 per hour. Indeed, the 3.6% revenue growth at US law firms achieved in the first nine months of 2017 was entirely driven by rate increases, according to Citi Private Bank’s annual industry report. 
 
     

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