BusinessWeek recently ran a cover page article about law firms and saying that big law is about to get small. It refers to a new book called “The Lawyer Bubble: A Profession in Crisis”. The book highlights that with a surplus of new talent entering the legal profession in America, many will not find jobs within the profession easily, and if they do it is not going to be an attractive one like it used to be. Of course, the big law firms are also finding it much harder to keep the rainmakers – the people who actually bring in the business – and those who simply do the work, are dependent upon.

Apparently, rainmakers now jump from one firm to another and are much more aware of the value that they bring to a firm in terms of bringing in new business. The article says the firms that generate the most profits per partner are typically not actually amongst the largest firms and for example, whereas there are quite a few firms in America with 1 000 partners, the most profitable two are at 79 partners and 83 respectively. Some of the bigger firms have recently gone bankrupt and experts have warned that an increase in proportion of young attorneys in America will get stuck working as non-partner staff lawyers or as employees of document processing outsourcing firms.

Estimates in America, and there is a similar overpopulation of lawyers happening in South Africa, are that the US economy will create 73 000 lawyer positions by the year 2020, but the law schools are pumping out 25 000 graduates a year which means that by the time they get to that year they will have an excess of 176 000 lawyers. As BusinessWeek says, “Young lawyers will increasingly struggle to establish a foothold … Firms are lengthening the route to partnership amid an over-supply of fresh labor.”