The number of jobs in the US economy rose by 1.4 per cent last year over the 2011 figure. But, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, employment in the legal sector trailed significantly, rising by only 0.7 per cent last year.

Never bounce back

Reporting the figures today, the AmLaw Daily web site says US law firms are still stinging from the massive employment hit sustained at the beginning of the global financial crisis, when the sector lost more than 60,000 jobs between 2008 and 2009. Indeed, the web site gives a downbeat assessment, suggesting the slow increase in the jobs figures indicates ‘employment in the legal sector might never fully bounce back’.
Nonetheless, the number of qualified personnel in the legal sector is forecast to continue its apparently inexorable rise. The web site reports that the total number of practising US lawyers is expected to increase by 10 per cent in the decade ending 2020. However, that revised prediction is more cautious than an earlier forecast, which had the number of lawyers growing by 13 per cent between 2008 and 2018.

Reducing demand

It is suggested that a gradually reducing demand for legal services from large corporate clients is at the heart of the downwardly revised growth forecasts. The web site quotes Clifford Winston, a senior fellow at Washington DC-based think tank, as saying: ‘Large companies are still trying to find ways to reduce legal costs. They’re asking the fundamental quwestio: “Do we need lawyers to do this?”’
AmLaw Daily says Mr Winston goes on to issue a dark prognosis for the future: ‘There’s no reason to think that things will return to their pre-crisis ways because the recession exposed law firms’ inefficiencies and prompted the market to move in a direction that uses lawyers less frequently.’