Most large law firms have taken little initiative to measure the success of practice areas, despite a commonly expressed desire to focus resources on their most profitable practices and give critical attention to those areas losing money. In part, this is because law firms lack a commonly accepted methodology for tracking revenues and expenses. As a result, even those firms that actually maintain formal profit centring systems have found little practical use for the information, other than satisfaction of curiosity.
These are some of the conclusions drawn from a recent survey, conducted by Edge International, that researched the use of practice area profit centres in large US law firms.
