Does the size of the law firm where you work determine what areas of law you practice?
There are over 1,800 law firms across Queensland, varied from sole practitioners with one solicitor to large firms with over 100 solicitors, also the areas of law firms they practice vary. By reviewing the data from the Lexon Insurance professional indemnity (PI) insurance questionnaire we aim to determine if the area of practice is determined by the size of the firm.
Table 1 General information regarding the different areas of law
The most common area of law was Wills and Estates and Residential conveyancing with two thirds of all law firms providing this service. Tax law is at the other end of the spectrum, and were only provided by one in twenty law firms with 70% of these firms spending less than 10% of their time on this area of law.
The general trend is the larger the firm the more likely they are to have worked in more areas of law during 2015 (figure 1). This is not absolute with many of the smaller firms practising in multiple areas and many of the larger firms not working in Criminal law, with Family and Tax law also not provided by all large firms.
Figure 1 Average areas of law practiced in 2015 by firm type
Firm size correlates with the number of areas of law practiced during 2015. This trend becomes starker when the number of law firms practicing four or less areas of law decreasing as firm size increases (figure 2). A similar trend for firms who work nine or more areas of law is also present but is not as strong.
Figure 2 Distribution of disciplines practiced by firm size
On average Small and Medium firms provided the same number of areas of law (figure 1), however a closer examination (figure 2) shows that small firms have a greater variance of disciplines practiced than medium firms with the number of areas of law practiced.
Different sized firms on average spend different amounts of time on different areas of law (table 2). A good example is Residential Conveyancing and Litigation. Smaller firms are more likely to spend more time performing Residential Conveyancing than Litigation. This is the opposite in larger firms. The break-even number of employees for spending the same amount of time on residential conveyancing and litigation is approximately eight employees (figure 3).
Figure 3 Correlation of firm size and average percent of time spent on Residential Conveyancing and Litigation
Other areas of law also display similar patterns with Wills and Estates sharing a commonality with Residential Conveyancing with a decrease in time spent as firm size increases. Personal Injuries has a similar pattern to Litigation, increasing on average as firm size increases.
Table 2 Average time spent on each area of law by firm type
The Medium and Large firms which include all firms with more than 20 lawyers spend on average 60% of their time working in Litigation, Personal Injuries and Other Commercial Law. This is especially prevalant in Large firms with three quarters (77%) of firms spending over 60% of their time in these three areas of law.
Criminal Law and Family Law are outliers in respect to being heavily skewed in Micro and Small firms. With Micro and Small firms spending on average more time in these areas than other firm sizes, and also having a greater proportion of firms that spend more than a third of their time focused on these areas of law. This is not to say they specialise, merely this is their 2015 workload.
The size of the firm in which you work does should not affect which areas of law you practice in. The size of your firm could affect how many areas of law you are likely to encounter on a daily basis and how much time you spend practicing an area of law.
