The Power 100 blends objective data points (changes in headcount over time, promotional prospects, and number of women partners) with subjective feedback from over 20,000 associates, partners, and other members of the legal community. The result is a more complete picture of each firm, encompassing employee satisfaction, compensation, reputation, desirability as an employer, and data-driven measures of firm growth.

As a result, the Power 100 is meant to offer a career-minded lawyer's perspective on some of the most prestigious and wealthy firms. Every firm tries to distinguish itself with its "culture," but metrics concerning diversity and promotion tells us more about what it's like to work and grow at a firm. Every firm will tout its profits-per-partner, but looking at leverage and decay tell us more about the overall financial health of a firm.

We hope this list can be helpful to people looking to choose a career, not just a job.

(Please see the bottom of this page for an explanation of our methodology.)

Firms are rated on a scale with 100 possible points:

• Reputation survey
  “Strength and quality of practice”: 35%
  “Potential employer”: 15%
  The ATL Law Firm Reputation Survey splits “reputation” into two distinct aspects: 1) the reputed strength and quality of a firm’s practice, and 2) the perceived desirability of the firm as a potential employer. (For some, these factors will be functionally equivalent. For others, these are less overlapping considerations.) In addition, the ATL Law Firm Reputation Survey asked respondents to rate firms in their specific market for both practice quality as well as desirability as potential employers. (In creating the survey, we limited our city-specific firm choices to offices with at least 50 lawyers.)

• Leverage
  Ratio of equity partners to all other attorneys: 5%
• Growth/decay
  % change in headcount since 2012: 5%
• Percentage of women partners: 5%
• Partnership prospects
  % of all non-partners who made partner in the most recent promotion cycle: 5%
• Insider satisfaction
  ATL Insider Survey: 5%

• Compensation rating: 25%*
  Compensation rating accounts for the following 4 factors: first-year salary, recent track record for bonuses, profits per partner (as reported to Am Law), and ATL survey data.

Obviously, we are making value judgments in choosing and assigning weight to these metrics. For example, we are rewarding firms for maintaining low leverage, or for offering a relatively better chance for incoming associates to eventually ascend to partnership. Also, to be sure, law firms are not homogenous in their approaches to partnership tracks or compensation structures or other aspects that we have sought to measure here, but we have done our best to account for these differences and create a formula that allows for meaningful comparisons.

The perfect "ATL score" is 100. Each firm is awarded a maximum number of points based on the weight of each metric (a maximum of 25 points for highest compensation rating, 5 points for highest growth headcount, etc.). The points are awarded on a sliding scale from highest to lowest. (For certain categories, firms were placed into tiers and points were apportioned accordingly.) Those points add up to the total ATL score seen on the rankings table.