This was a view expressed recently at the LawVision Group conference when managing partners from cities including Chicago, San Antonio and Sacramento came together. Scott Shapiro, managing partner of Downey Brand in Sacramento, California, said: ‘Most [firms] are struggling to get laterals with books of business bigger than themselves.’ He said that there are some potential lateral hires with a business book worth US $500,000 to $600,000 a year. But he added that ‘every law firm wants $1 million to $1.5 million laterals’ who can also sustain some other lawyers working with them. Downey Brand, with 87 lawyers, is the largest legal practice in Sacramento.

Difficult to build a book

Steve Boutin, founding partner of Boutin Jones, a 45-lawyer firm in Sacramento, said: ‘It’s difficult for mid-level attorneys to build a book because senior people, frankly, are holding onto it and not pushing it down [to associates] like they used to.’ There have also been many incidences of lawyers starting their own boutique practices, in the US and in Australia, rather than joining existing firms. Source: Sacramento Business Journal