What is the point of law firm panels? There are, of course, several obvious reasons for their existence; among them handing clients more leverage to manage adviser relationships. Usually this occurs by handing out more work to a smaller number of larger firms. Whether panels have achieved this aim is debatable. But what is becoming harder to sustain is the view that the panel system has ushered in another of its supposed benefits: securing value for money and containing legal services inflation.
After all, as Legal Week recently noted with regard to the current inflation-busting pay round at City law firms, junior solicitors at large commercial firms will this year earn around twice what their equivalents did in 1999. This year’s financial results will show that equity partners, likewise, can expect to take home double what a similar partner at a top 50 UK firm would have done eight years ago.
