Billing rates continued to climb in 2010 — but by only a fraction of the rate they grew during the boom years of the mid-2000s.
The average firmwide billing rate — a combination of associate and partner rates — increased by 2.7% in 2010, according to The National Law Journal’s annual survey of hourly billing rates. It’s the second straight year of growth rates less than 3%, which is a far cry from the standard 6% to 8% increases from 2004 until 2008 and just slightly higher than the rate of inflation.
