The price of bitcoin plunged after Elon Musk’s recent pronouncement on Twitter that Tesla would no longer accept bitcoin as payment for electric vehicles. That volatility highlights one of several reasons that while more law firms are welcoming crypto payments, still a minority of firms accept it. And a limited number of clients even use it for legal fees.

Within Big Law, there’s a tentative acceptance of alternative currencies: Perkins Coie has been accepting bitcoin since 2013, Steptoe & Johnson has been doing so since 2016, and Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan came aboard in 2019. But other firms with brisk practices serving the blockchain community, including DLA Piper, said that limited demand means that it’s not worth the headache to create the infrastructure.