According to Jagger, top tier commercial firms have decreased their partnership numbers by roughly 25 per cent since 2008 and have also reduced their graduate intake. He said: ‘I think that it’s fair to say that Australian law firms are excellent … but we’re over lawyered and unless the market expands rapidly and I can’t see that, the competition for market share is going to become more and more intense. I also think that some of the UK and US firms that have entered the market may struggle when they realise just how competitive the market is that they have entered. So it will be interesting to see over the next few years which ones succeed and which ones fail.’ 

Emerging divide

Jagger commented that traditional firms may have to adapt in order to keep up with the new players: ‘Some traditional law firms will become what we call now alternative legal service providers as well, so instead of the market share continuing to contract their traditional services, they are going to be forced to expand their services to maintain market share. You might see this big divide emerging between the global providers and the local specialists and boutiques with not much in between.’ Source: Australian Lawyer