Forgive my impertinence, but I feel bound to say that solicitors are not working hard enough. Not all of them, anyway. That is one conclusion to be drawn from this year’s NatWest Legal Benchmarking Report, one of the sector’s better financial bellwethers.
Only 15% of firms surveyed reported that fee-earners log over five chargeable hours per day. Nearly a third reported less than four hours. Remarkably, one in eight said fee-earner productivity is actually declining.
‘This data clearly points to a challenge for law firms and the first line of attack in terms of both understanding the cost of the work firms undertake but also to enable them to improve profit margins,’ the report says.
Indeed. When you’re angrily protesting the government’s plan to seize client account interest – 20% of reported profits at many firms – the fact that many solicitors don’t put in much more than half a day’s work does not aid your case.
Don’t write in! I know that statistics can be misleading. And that no one is truly ‘average’.
But how can this be explained? Has the long post-Covid trading boom (now seemingly over) rendered solicitors even more dilatory than usual when recording their time? Are firm owners less bothered? No need to sweat the assets when the cash is rolling in, perhaps.
As the market for your services hardens once again, it will be interesting to see how firmly solicitors grasp this nettle. It is, after all, a perennial problem. Earlier this year, the Law Society’s own benchmarking survey found that chargeable hours per fee-earner had crept up from 752 in 2025 to 807. But against a notional industry standard of 1,000-1,200 hours, there remains a big margin for improvement.
‘I’d be asking fee-earners working a 35-hour week what they are doing during the three or four hours a day they are not charging for their services,’ one firm owner mused pointedly.
Elsewhere, the NatWest report extrapolated from survey responses that 10% of law firms could go under if the Ministry of Justice presses ahead with the Interest on Lawyers’ Client Accounts Scheme. That’s 900 legal businesses – many of them on regional high streets.
Alarmist? Possibly. But it should not escape ministers that ILCA could cost the country more than it yields.
No comments yet