Talent Wars: Big 4 vs Big Law

Last week, Samantha Stokes, of Business Insider, used Revelio Labs to track the talent poaching between Big Law firms and the Big 4 consulting firms. In this article, she writes about how big law firms, with revenues often above $1B/year, have been recruiting heavily from the large service firms to move their business forward. In 2020, the 100 largest law firms have recruited nearly 850 professionals from the Deloitte, Ernst & Young, KPMG, and PWC:

Among the top law firms, Baker McKenzie has made led the charge in recruiting from professional service firms over the last ten years:

While all of the Big 4 have lost many employees to law firms, PWC has the largest trade deficit:

Takeaways:

• The flow of talent between Big Law and the Big 4 professional services firms has been heating up over the last ten years, with no sign of slowing.
• As business talent flows into law firms, the era of top law partners being responsible for generating business may be coming to an end.
• As the big 4 continues to build out legal services that can be bundled with business consulting, they may face some competition from law firms, not just in business offerings but also in talent markets.

If you have any ideas of other metrics to track or would like to hear more, please feel free to reach out.