In the legal industry, demand for high-performing attorneys rarely ebbs and flows substantially with the legal job market. If anything, contracting margins across the industry means highly profitable attorneys are more valuable than ever. If a firm has an especially skilled and successful attorney in a sought-after practice area, it can assume he or she is regularly courted by rival firms.
Any firm would be troubled to lose a top revenue producer unexpectedly—whether to a competitor, disability or death—but small and mid-size firms that rely on a few “rainmakers” for a large portion of their revenue are especially exposed to this kind of risk.
