It’s still early in 2024, but law firms may finally be disembarking from a nearly four-year “roller coaster” of volatility, and returning to something that more closely resembles the pre-pandemic era.

A return to profit growth and a more normal baseline for other drivers of profitability in 2023, coupled with fresh optimism for a transactional rebound in 2024, have firm leaders and industry observers in recent weeks gesturing toward an idea that’s often eluded them since at least the string of COVID shutdowns around this time in 2020: “normalcy.”