Blended billing rates and their correlation with law firm size

In a recent consulting project, we studied the relationship between law firm’s blended billing rate and the number of lawyers in the firm. For 12 law firms, all based in the U.S. and nearly all of them exceeding 200 lawyers, when we looked at more than $200M worth of invoices in total, we found the correlation between blended rate and firm size to be quite strong.

Bigger firms have more overhead, which is reflected in their rates, or they are good enough to be able to charge more for work.