Sagging productivity within Big Law and declining realization have combined to put a damper on law firm profitability growth, and even the high pace of billing rate growth hasn’t been able to remedy it, according to a new report.

Now, “many law firms have seen their ability to collect on those increasing rates falter, and clients have become more aggressive about trying to tier work to lower-cost firms,” said the authors of the Thomson Reuters 2024 Report on the State of the Legal Market, published Tuesday.