Law firms as an institution date back to the 19th century, and in the United States began appearing in the period before the Civil War.
The Committee was charged with the duty of laying the groundwork for the development of practical suggestions to lawyers, designed to improve their economic status.
Combined with this, there was to be an increase in coordination of assistance to lawyers in the business phase of the practice of law, achieved by ABA through its staff, committees and sections and by the state and local bar associations.
Satterfield was elected President of the American Bar Association in 1961 during which The Lawyers Handbook was first published and distributed to all attorneys who joined the ABA that year.
The Committee's staff answered over one hundred inquiries a month from attorneys regarding the application of sound management principles to the law office operation.
Accordingly, two members of the Committee, Robert S. Mucklestone of Seattle, Washington, the former Chair of the Young Lawyers Section, and Richard A. Williams of Little Rock, Arkansas were joined by William J. Fuchs of Haverford, Pennsylvania; John “Buddy” Thomason of Memphis, Tennessee; and Robert P. Wilkins of Columbia, South Carolina, and commenced efforts to form a section to address the subject of law office economics and management.
At the ABA Midyear Meeting in Houston, Texas in February 1974, the House of Delegates approved establishing the Section of Economics of Law Practice.
The organizational meeting of the Section was held in April 1974 at the close of the Sixth National Conference of Law Office Economics and Management.
The current chair of the American Bar Association Law Practice Division is Tom Bolt, a St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands lawyer with BoltNagi PC.
[10] Other software used includes password security, disk encryption, mindmapping, desktop notes, word processing, and email management.
[21] Law firms often employ a number of non-legal personnel or support staff; according to one figure, the average attorney to non-attorney ratio is 1 to 1.3.