Is There a Gap in the Law Firm Pricing Talent Pipeline?

I spend a lot of my time speaking to legal pricing professionals at every level, from Analysts and Managers through to Directors and Heads of Pricing. We have a strong network in this market and I am pleased to say we continue to identify and place good people for the firms we work with, at all levels.

Looking across the pricing talent pool recently, I have a made an interesting observation:

The Pricing Manager population appears noticeably smaller than those either side of it – Analysts at the more junior end and Heads/Directors on the senior side.

Firms tend to have a fairly clear idea of what they want at manager level: typically someone with four to six years’ law firm experience, strong technical pricing knowledge, commercial confidence and the credibility to work directly with partners.

Of course, there are people who fit that profile. But proportionally, there seem to be fewer of them than I would expect.

Why? I have a theory that at least part of the answer goes back to 2020.

Did COVID interrupt the development of law firm Pricing Managers?

Think about the people who would naturally be moving into established Pricing Manager positions today, given the four-to-six-year profile. Many of them would have joined a law firm pricing team, or been in the early stages of their careers, around 2020 and 2021 – coinciding with the pandemic.

For anyone starting a career in pricing, their learning experience was dramatically different – unprecedented, in fact!

Law firms moved to remote working almost overnight. Teams were dispersed and remote, meaning the everyday interactions, informal communication, mentoring and exposure to the job that had previously happened naturally in an office environment disappeared.

For an experienced pricing professional, it was a big adjustment to make. For an analyst learning their trade, I suspect the impact may have been much greater.

Legal pricing has a significant technical component. You can learn rates, profitability, matter economics, budgeting and alternative fee arrangements remotely.

But that's only part of what makes someone a really good Pricing Manager.

Some of the most important skills are learned through exposure

A strong Pricing Manager needs to know how to work with partners. They need the confidence to question assumptions, understand the commercial context behind a matter and explain their recommendations to people who won't necessarily agree with them.

Before 2020, a junior member of a pricing team might have sat alongside experienced colleagues, listened to how they handled difficult conversations, joined partner meetings and picked up the commercial context surrounding a piece of work. Not all of that can be replicated through formal training or a teams call.

So, I wonder whether we are now seeing the delayed effect of losing some of that experience.

The people whose early development was interrupted in 2020 and 2021 are now exactly the people we might expect to make up a large part of today's four-to-six-year manager population.

It doesn't mean they aren't good pricing professionals. Far from it. But some may simply have had fewer opportunities to develop the broader experience and judgement, gained through exposure, that law firms now expect at this level.

Pricing teams were changing at the same time

The pandemic wasn't the only factor. There are other changes in the pricing market that I believe have played a part.

Pricing functions within US law firms have grown considerably over recent years. As teams expanded, firms needed more people at Manager level, creating opportunities for experienced analysts to step up.

Could that expansion have accelerated progression through the pipeline?

Someone moving into a manager position earlier in their career may be perfectly capable of doing the job. But they haven't necessarily had the same amount of time to build the breadth of partner exposure and commercial experience that firms are now looking for when they recruit an accomplished Pricing Manager.

And alongside that, tracking how my briefs have changed recently, law firms might also be asking more of their Pricing Managers than they did a few years ago....

Are law firms asking more of their Pricing Managers?

The briefs I work on now go well beyond technical pricing expertise.

This reflects a broader trend across the client value market, where commercial judgment, strategic capability and the ability to influence senior stakeholders are becoming increasingly important, a point I've highlighted in our Q2 2026 US Law Firm Client Value Market Update.

Firms want managers who understand pricing strategy and profitability and who can operate confidently with senior partners. They need people who can challenge constructively, understand the wider commercial picture and work with a fair degree of independence.

Perhaps, then, part of the apparent gap is about how we define an accomplished Pricing Manager.

There are plenty of talented people developing their careers in legal pricing. The question is whether enough have yet accumulated the particular combination of technical experience, commercial judgment and partner exposure that firms are looking for at this level.

There is also an argument that some of that commercial and strategic experience can be found outside law firms. I have long championed the value of looking beyond traditional law firm talent pools to adjacent sectors, such as consultancies.

That won't be right for every hire, particularly where previous law firm experience is an important part of the brief. But where firms can be more flexible, it potentially opens up another source of people with the broader commercial skills they are looking for.

Retention plays a part

There is also a much simpler consideration: good Pricing Managers are valuable to their current firms. Someone who has built strong internal relationships, is well compensated and can see a route to further progression may have little reason to move.

That reduces the proportion of the manager population likely to consider another position at any particular time.

It's an important distinction. A relatively small active candidate market doesn't necessarily mean the underlying talent isn't there.

We continue to work with pricing professionals across every level of the market, including experienced Pricing Managers. Our established legal pricing network has also supported more junior analyst hires and senior appointments such as Director of Pricing. 

But the make-up of that network is lighter in that middle manager bracket.

A delayed effect on the pricing talent pipeline?

I'm sure there probably isn't one explanation for why the middle layer of the legal pricing market looks the way it does today.

Retention plays a part. Pricing teams have expanded, potentially giving people opportunities to progress more quickly. I believe firms are also asking more of their Pricing Managers than they did a few years ago.

But I keep coming back to the timing.

Many of the people who would naturally be established managers today were developing their careers during a period when the usual opportunities to learn from experienced colleagues and gain exposure to partners were significantly reduced.

If that has contributed to a gap in today's talent pipeline, there may also be something we can learn from it.

AI is already changing the work carried out by junior professionals in law firms. There is a wider discussion in the legal sector about what happens when technology takes on some of the work people previously learned through doing. The Thomson Reuters Institute has explored this specifically in relation to the development of judgment among junior lawyers. 

What if the same issue could eventually apply to pricing?

That doesn't mean people should eschew AI and continue doing repetitive work simply because that's how previous cohorts learned. I'm convinced AI will give junior Pricing professionals the opportunity to work differently and potentially progress faster.

But as the work changes, firms may need to think more deliberately about how their teams will develop the judgment and commercial understanding they need as their careers progress.

Perhaps that's the more important question raised by the manager market today.

If interrupted learning has contributed to a gap in one generation of Pricing Managers, how do we make sure changes to the way people work today don't create another gap further down the line?

 

To talk about the Legal Pricing talent market in more detail, join our Pricing network or discuss a hiring requirement, contact Simon Taylor 

‹ Back