Four Takeaways From 2024’s Legal Trends Report

Each fall, Clio releases their Legal Trends Report, a data-based update on the legal world based on surveys conducted throughout the year. Over 1,000 law firms across the U.S. participate in these surveys, and the results are then collated and analyzed in the report later in the year.

If you’ve never read a Legal Trends Report, you’re really missing out. Many of the statistics used in our blogs are sourced from these reports over the years, as there aren’t many other truly reliable sources specifically about the legal world. While the data can’t predict the future, it’s still a great indicator of the direction the legal industry was headed in the last year. Law firm owners in particular can learn a lot from the tables of KPIs at the end of the report by comparing their own data to see where they stack up!

2024’s Legal Trends Report, released in October of 2024, is full of great information to help make big-picture decisions in 2025 and beyond. Below, we’ll present the four biggest takeaways from the report, and some solutions to the problems suggested by Clio’s analysis.

Small Law Firms Are Still Facing Billing Issues

While not as exciting as some of the other topics we’ll be covering in this blog, it’s certainly one of the most important: small law firms are having trouble billing hours and making sure their bills are paid.

In Clio’s 2024 Legal Trends For Solo and Small Law Firms, 37 percent of solo law firms report they take too long to bill clients, and 36 percent feel their clients don’t pay bills on time.

Though technically not from the 2024 Legal Trends Report, this statistic comes from the same dataset and highlights issues specific to solo and small law firms, making them a great resource for solo attorneys and small law firm owners. The report is full of statistics like the above, but they are all saying the same thing: smaller law firms have trouble getting paid.

The problem is this: these law firms likely don’t have a dedicated payment processing department, or even any staff dedicated to this task at all, the way mid-sized firms and larger firms might. You could solve this problem with staff, of course, but there’s a reason small firms don’t have staff to handle these tasks: they can’t afford it!

The solution, here, is in technology. By integrating your legal practice management and payment processing software, you can set up automations that will send out invoices as soon as you mark a matter as complete. Sending invoices in a timely manner is key to getting paid on time, and solves half the problem! These tech tools can also automate payment reminders, taking the burden of hounding clients to pay you off your plate.

AI Is Still On The Rise In The Legal Field

Tech and automation are as big a topic as ever in the legal world, but now you can’t talk about either without talking about AI. Since the explosion of Chat-GPT onto the global stage, legal tech companies have been rebranding their algorithmic components as AI-powered and building generative AI into their tools.

That kind of supply implies a significant demand. The law might be the most AI-powered professional field in a few years!

Clio’s analysis revealed that 74 percent of a law firm’s hourly billable tasks can potentially be automated by AI, including 57 percent of a lawyer’s tasks.

As scary as this sounds, you can’t approach changes like this with fear. Barring significant surprises, AI is here to stay for the foreseeable future, and its adoption promises a lot for attorneys ready to take charge of it.

The statistic above is based on Clio’s analysis of the hourly billed tasks undertaken by law firms and how much of them could be automated by AI. Documenting and recording information, for example, is listed as 26 percent of a lawyer’s billable time, and estimated to be 86 percent automatable by AI technology.

The solution here, as has been stressed by experts like Mathew Kerbis, host of the podcast Law Subscribed and an attorney working under a subscription model, is to move away from hourly billing as much as possible. When you bill by the hour and 74 percent of your time can be automated away, you’re going to need to take on many, many more clients to reach the revenue numbers your firm is hitting now. Check out our blog on the pros and cons of the billable hour here.

Alternative Billing Practices Are Growing More Common

Luckily for law firms, the billable hour, long the most common billing method for lawyers, seems to be losing its grip on the legal world. This shift has been a long time coming, as wellness experts and bar associations have been sounding the alarm on the health detriments of the billable hour for years. The AI boom, however, has raised concerns about the long-term viability of the billable hour, accelerating what might have been a decades-long shift.

In 2024, flat fee bills jumped six percent across the legal field.

Six percent might not feel like much, but considering that flat fee billing accounted for 19 percent of all bills in 2023, it’s quite a jump! Clio attributes this jump to the rapid adoption of AI technology across the legal field, and we can’t disagree.

What does this mean for you, though? Should you jump ship and abandon the billable hour altogether? Well, unfortunately, only you can answer that question. The answer changes from practice area to practice area, and even within practice areas, there can be firms that benefit more from a certain billing method than others.

The only thing we can wholeheartedly recommend for every law firm is to no longer take the billable hour for granted. Do some research into other billing practices, and see which kinds of firms they work best for. We can recommend starting with our own series on alternative billing arrangements, like flat fees, subscriptions, and more.

Lawyers Aren’t Answering Their Phones

We like to save the best for last here at the Answering Legal Blog, and this post is no exception. The most shocking statistic from 2024’s Legal Trends Report is that lawyers have actually gotten worse at answering the phone! Clio conducted a repeat of their 2019 “secret shopper” study, where they emailed and called law firms to judge their responsiveness.

Of the 500 law firms called as part of the study, only 40 percent picked up the phone, and only 25 percent of those who missed calls called Clio back!

That statistic can be compared to 56 and 38 percent, respectively, in 2019! So what gives? Why are law firms worse at answering the phone than they were in 2019?

There are a lot of answers to that question. Many law firms might have shifted to a more online-first lead collection process and so they may be seeing fewer phone inquiries than web leads. Lifted regulations on spam calls might also be at play; lawyers (and everyone else) are up their ears in robocalls and scam texts, and may be more prone to screening calls and relying on voicemail to distinguish a scam from a business opportunity.

Regardless of why it’s happening, the fact that your fellow attorneys aren’t picking up the phone is an opportunity for you. Your competition isn’t answering the phone; if you do, you’ll be able to pick up the business they’re missing out on! By nurturing the phone calls your competitors are neglecting, you might be able to boost your client base with very little effort.

Never Miss Another Call With Answering Legal

How can you take advantage of this neglect by your fellow attorneys? Why, by answering every call! Of course, regardless of whether or not you’re still billing by the hour, every second counts when it comes to legal work, and ensuring 24/7 phone coverage can be expensive and tiring, whether you’re doing it yourself or hiring staff.

The answer, then, is to hire a legal answering service. And if you’re going to do that, you can’t go wrong with Answering Legal. We only answer for lawyers, so our virtual receptionists are experts at legal intake, which you can read more about here. They undergo a 90-day training period before ever picking up the phone for a lawyer. Check out our training regimen here!

Our staff isn’t the only thing that makes us the best answer to missed calls. We own our own call center technology, which means we’re always pushing updates, including integrations with legal CRMs. And we have our own app and webchat, enabling you to do more than just answer every call; you’ll be following up on phone calls and web leads like never before.

Prepare yourself for the changing legal landscape. Click here or call 631-686-9700 to sign up for our free trial. For a limited time, we’re offering firms that sign up for our service their first 400 minutes free.