Editor’s note from The Legal Intelligencer: This is the first in a weekly series examining how law firms adapted during the last two years and where they are headed as the economy recovers.

Last year, Eckert Seamans Cherin & Mellott CEO Timothy P. Ryan seemed well ahead of the curve when clients started pushing back on paying for the inexperience of first- and second-year associates on their matters, and law firms, in turn, started hiring fewer, if any, young attorneys.