Most in-house legal departments wanted to cut their outside counsel expenses during the pandemic, according to the 2021 Report on the State of the Legal Market from Thomson Reuters and Georgetown Law. But they also said law firms were better prepared to meet those demands for efficiency than they were during the 2008 recession.

“Law firms are in a much better place than they were coming out of 2008,” Mike Abbott, vice president of market insights and thought leadership at Thomson Reuters in Minneapolis, said on Wednesday. “The communication [in this crisis] was better than it was then. The client-law firm relationship is in a much better place.”