Maybe it’s the improving U.S. economy or maybe it’s just law firms resolving to embrace the new normal of the post-recession legal industry, but Pennsylvania firm leaders who responded to PaLaw Magazine’s 22nd Annual Managing Partners Survey sounded markedly more optimistic about the coming year than they have in recent memory—even if they’re not necessarily having any more fun.
This year, for example, 100 percent of respondents said they expect to grow head count in the coming year. Of those, 23 percent said they expect to grow attorney ranks by more than 10 percent and 77 percent said they foresee growth of less than 10 percent.
Those numbers were up from 2016′s responses, when 88 percent of respondents said they expected to grow in the coming year. In 2015, only 74 percent said they foresaw growth in the coming year.
