Inventories grew rapidly for the Am Law 200, but the growth was not uniform, with inventory growing much faster for the Am Law 50 (up 19%) than for the other tiers (11% for the Second Fifty and 12% for the Second Hundred). With inventory growing faster than revenue, the inventory collection cycle (number of days it takes to collect fees once work is performed) slowed by 6.5 days (3.4%), with nearly all the slowdown occurring at the top of the market. This was a marked change from this time last year when inventories grew in line with collections.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
The Trump era is in full swing. The president notoriously spent his long business career stiffing his vendors, including \u2014 and especially \u2014 his attorneys. He\u2019s sitting on top of over a million in unpaid legal fees<\/a> right now<\/em>. He used to be a model of bad behavior, but maybe the rest of the business world decided he was onto something.<\/p>\n \u201cAll the big AI firms are in the process of going through an IPO and there are a ton of other deals taking place \u2014 data centers and infrastructure work,\u201d Wells Fargo\u2019s Owen Burman told Bloomberg Law News<\/a>. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of work that hasn\u2019t been collected on yet.\u201d <\/p>\n Well, that\u2019s what happens when the industry propping up the whole economy is just a bundle of IOUs passed back and forth between NVIDIA, OpenAI, and Oracle in an ouroboros of hype. It\u2019s just a matter of time before they ask the law firm to send them $20 million so they can pay the law firm back $20 million \u2014 a stupid proposition, but somehow EXACTLY HOW THE REST OF THE AI INDUSTRY RUNS. And getting the data center deals<\/em> done is not the same as having data centers. From Ed Zitron<\/a>:<\/p>\n Of the 114GW of data centers supposedly being built by the end of 2028,\u00a0only 15.2GW is under construction in any way, shape, or form<\/u><\/a>. And \u201cunder construction\u201d can mean as little as \u201cthere\u2019s a hole in the ground.\u201d It does not \u2014 and should not \u2014 imply that the capacity that said facility will provide is going to be imminently available.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n In other words, expect the collection cycle to keep slipping.<\/p>\n But, hey, bankruptcy work is right around the corner! That\u2019s exciting, right?<\/p>\n The post Biglaw Discovers That Charging $2,000\/Hour Is Easier Than Actually Collecting It<\/a> appeared first on Above the Law<\/a>.<\/p>\n Wells Fargo\u2019s Legal Specialty Group dropped its Q1 2026 survey this week, and everyone\u2019s giddy over the headline numbers. Revenues are up 13.1 percent, a byproduct of jacking up billing rates up a staggering 11.4 percent. It seems the only commodity costlier than crude oil in Q1 was a midlevel associate\u2019s attention to detail. Demand also creeped up 4.5 percent as corporate America found itself in need of more legal advice.<\/p>\n But, it seems, corporate America also found itself less interested in actually paying its bills.<\/p>\n Inventories grew rapidly for the Am Law 200, but the growth was not uniform, with inventory growing much faster for the Am Law 50 (up 19%) than for the other tiers (11% for the Second Fifty and 12% for the Second Hundred). With inventory growing faster than revenue, the inventory collection cycle (number of days it takes to collect fees once work is performed) slowed by 6.5 days (3.4%), with nearly all the slowdown occurring at the top of the market. This was a marked change from this time last year when inventories grew in line with collections.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n The Trump era is in full swing. The president notoriously spent his long business career stiffing his vendors, including \u2014 and especially \u2014 his attorneys. He\u2019s sitting on top of over a million in unpaid legal fees<\/a> right now<\/em>. He used to be a model of bad behavior, but maybe the rest of the business world decided he was onto something.<\/p>\n \u201cAll the big AI firms are in the process of going through an IPO and there are a ton of other deals taking place \u2014 data centers and infrastructure work,\u201d Wells Fargo\u2019s Owen Burman told Bloomberg Law News<\/a>. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of work that hasn\u2019t been collected on yet.\u201d <\/p>\n Well, that\u2019s what happens when the industry propping up the whole economy is just a bundle of IOUs passed back and forth between NVIDIA, OpenAI, and Oracle in an ouroboros of hype. It\u2019s just a matter of time before they ask the law firm to send them $20 million so they can pay the law firm back $20 million \u2014 a stupid proposition, but somehow EXACTLY HOW THE REST OF THE AI INDUSTRY RUNS. And getting the data center deals<\/em> done is not the same as having data centers. From Ed Zitron<\/a>:<\/p>\n Of the 114GW of data centers supposedly being built by the end of 2028,\u00a0only 15.2GW is under construction in any way, shape, or form<\/u><\/a>. And \u201cunder construction\u201d can mean as little as \u201cthere\u2019s a hole in the ground.\u201d It does not \u2014 and should not \u2014 imply that the capacity that said facility will provide is going to be imminently available.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n In other words, expect the collection cycle to keep slipping.<\/p>\n But, hey, bankruptcy work is right around the corner! That\u2019s exciting, right?<\/p>\n The post Biglaw Discovers That Charging $2,000\/Hour Is Easier Than Actually Collecting It<\/a> appeared first on Above the Law<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Wells Fargo\u2019s Legal Specialty Group dropped its Q1 2026 survey this week, and everyone\u2019s giddy over the headline numbers. Revenues are up 13.1 percent, a byproduct of jacking up billing rates up a staggering 11.4 percent. It seems the only commodity costlier than crude oil in Q1 was a midlevel associate\u2019s attention to detail. Demand […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":149982,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-149994","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-above_the_law"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/xira.com\/p\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Headshot-300x200-6fg8q6.jpg?fit=300%2C200&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149994","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=149994"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149994\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/149982"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=149994"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=149994"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=149994"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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Joe Patrice<\/a>\u00a0is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer<\/a>. Feel free to\u00a0email<\/a> any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on\u00a0Twitter<\/a>\u00a0or Bluesky<\/a> if you\u2019re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search<\/a>.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n
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\nJoe Patrice<\/a>\u00a0is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer<\/a>. Feel free to\u00a0email<\/a> any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on\u00a0Twitter<\/a>\u00a0or Bluesky<\/a> if you\u2019re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search<\/a>.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n