(April 15, 2015 Fortune) After years of souring loans, bad acquisitions, and fines, Bank of America finally had its chance to show Wall Street its stuff. What it had to show was meh.
On Wednesday, Bank of America said it earned $3.4 billion in the first quarter of 2015. That was up from a loss of $267 million during the same period a year ago. But that was before legal charges, which were $6 billion in the quarter a year ago. Strip those out, and BofA’s pre-tax earnings actually fell 17%.
Bank of
America paid $6 billion in 4Q14 because of bad banking practices and loan
performance issues. If the entire legal practice industry is worth $400 Billion,
within that figure law firm billings are projected to be around $274 Billion according to the Legal Transformation Institute – that makes just one quarter of Bank of America's spend alone about 2% of the legal billings industry.
Gives pause to think that take that 2% times the ten
major bank/blended financial firms (aka Too Big To Fail) by this logic spending
about 20% of all legal fees?
Or…
$6 billion in one quarter billings as reported is equivalent to the entire legal industry in Nebraska?
Even with the power of Google haven’t found numbers the exact numbers of Nebraska billable size. But as just an example, take the $274 Billion billing industry estimate as a straight average of 50 states
= $5.5 Billion per state average.
Makes the numbers come into a bit of perspective.