Lots of people rank law firms. And you can dice up law firm rankings in so many ways: by “prestige,” revenues, and more. That’s all great, but if you are going to work in a Biglaw firm, you are going to be working in a specific office. And that office is going to make or break your experience with your firm. Not all offices are created equal, even within the same firm. There are firms that aren’t thought of very highly overall, but a specific office of their operation might be doing great work and be the place for your kind of thing.

With these rankings, Above the Law is trying to capture the strength and relevance of major law firms in today's market. Who are the market leaders? Which firms are still making and retaining their partners? Where do you want to work? But the methods for evaluating the large law firms that are best at the business of practicing law are stuck in the past. The new normal means new challenges for firms. Is bigger always better? More revenue sounds nice, unless the firm is overly reliant on a few rainmakers who can jump ship and leave the rest of the firm scrambling for clients. Surely, the last client who cared about white-shoe status is somewhere trying to find a new ribbon for his typewriter.

The Office 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 individual office, encompassing employee satisfaction, compensation, reputation, desirability as an employer, and data-driven measures of firm growth. The Office 100 is meant to offer a new perspective on some of the most prestigious and wealthy firms by using a new rubric to show how they stack up both against their competitors and across their own offices.

Rank	2015 Rank	Firm	Office	Score
1	1	Kirkland & Ellis LLP	Chicago	85.00
2	11	Latham & Watkins LLP	Los Angeles	84.87
3	6	Davis Polk & Wardwell	New York	84.62
4	22	Vinson & Elkins LLP	Houston	83.78
5	13 (tie)	Sidley Austin LLP	Chicago	83.39
6	9	Gibson Dunn & Crutcher LLP	Los Angeles	81.95
7	5	Alston & Bird LLP	Atlanta	81.42
8	18	King & Spalding	Atlanta	81.26
9	24	Latham & Watkins LLP	Chicago	81.17
10	13 (tie)	Sullivan & Cromwell LLP	New York	80.58
11		Jones Day	Cleveland	80.38
12	15	Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP	New York	80.28
13	12	Covington & Burling LLP	Washington, DC	79.89
14	20	Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP and Affiliates	Chicago	79.75
15	8	Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP	New York	79.66
16	36	Latham & Watkins LLP	Houston	79.45
17		Greenberg Traurig, LLP	Miami	79.22
18	29	Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP	New York	79.09
19	27	Kirkland & Ellis LLP	Washington, DC	78.67
20	17	Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP	New York	78.66
21	30	Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP and Affiliates	Los Angeles	78.62
22	7	Munger, Tolles & Olson LLP	Los Angeles	78.14
23	28	Davis Polk & Wardwell	Silicon Valley	78.11
24	40 (tie)	Cooley LLP	Silicon Valley	77.53
25	25	Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP and Affiliates	New York	77.33
26	42	Latham & Watkins LLP	Silicon Valley	77.31
27	26	WilmerHale	Washington, DC	77.17
28	2	Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz	New York	77.14
29	4	Morgan Lewis & Bockius LLP	Philadelphia	77.08
30	47	Boies, Schiller & Flexner LLP	New York	76.81
31	39	Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan LLP	Los Angeles	76.53
32	31	Gibson Dunn & Crutcher LLP	San Francisco	76.28
33	10	Kirkland & Ellis LLP	San Francisco	76.03
34	16	WilmerHale	Boston	75.80
35	63	Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan LLP	San Francisco	75.77
36		K&L Gates LLP	Pittsburgh	75.69
37	19	Gibson Dunn & Crutcher LLP	Washington, DC	75.62
38	40 (tie)	Debevoise & Plimpton LLP	New York	75.27
39	34	Kirkland & Ellis LLP	Los Angeles	75.25
40	45	Williams & Connolly LLP	Washington, DC	75.09
41	52	Sidley Austin LLP	Washington, DC	74.93
42	77	Mayer Brown LLP	Chicago	74.53
43		Kirkland & Ellis	New York	74.20
44	37	Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP	Washington, DC	74.20
45		Gibson Dunn & Crutcher LLP	Dallas	74.14
46	76	Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP and Affiliates	Silicon Valley	74.11
47	3	Ropes & Gray LLP	Boston	74.09
48	38	Latham & Watkins LLP	San Francisco	74.08
49	33	Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton LLP	Atlanta	74.00
50		Reed Smith LLP	Pittsburgh	73.96
51		Jones Day	Pittsburgh	73.89
52	54	Latham & Watkins LLP	New York	73.65
52		Baker & Hostetler LLP	Cleveland	73.65
53	23	Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP and Affiliates	Washington, DC	73.42
54	56	Covington & Burling LLP	San Francisco	73.41
54	57	Jones Day	Chicago	73.41
55	35	O'Melveny & Myers LLP	Los Angeles	73.35
56	32	Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati	Silicon Valley	73.34
57	51	Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP	New York	73.32
58	55	Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP	Washington, DC	72.90
59	82	Jenner & Block LLP	Chicago	72.79
60	49	Irell & Manella LLP	Los Angeles	72.57
61	68	Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan LLP	Washington, DC	72.31
62	78	Baker & Hostetler LLP	Philadelphia	72.30
63	21	Dechert LLP	Philadelphia	72.00
64	48	Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati	San Francisco	71.84
65	85	McDermott Will & Emery LLP	Chicago	71.67
66	58	Goodwin Procter LLP	Boston	71.54
67		Vinson & Elkins LLP	Dallas	71.34
68	83	Sidley Austin LLP	Los Angeles	71.26
69		Baker Botts LLP	Dallas	71.00
70	61	Gibson Dunn & Crutcher LLP	New York	70.97
71	59	Jones Day	Washington, DC	70.82
72	75	Gibson Dunn & Crutcher LLP	Silicon Valley	70.71
73	81	Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP	Silicon Valley	70.58
74	95	Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP	Silicon Valley	70.56
75	60	Arnold & Porter LLP	Washington, DC	70.38
76	44	Latham & Watkins LLP	Washington, DC	70.22
77	88	Cooley LLP	San Francisco	70.18
77	53	Morrison & Foerster LLP	San Francisco	70.18
78	69	Morrison & Foerster LLP	Silicon Valley	70.13
79	70	Baker Botts LLP	Houston	70.11
80	80	Paul Hastings LLP	Los Angeles	70.09
81	67	Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP	San Francisco	70.00
82	64	Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan LLP	New York	69.75
83		Sidley Austin LLP	Dallas	69.34
84	66	Hogan Lovells US LLP	Washington, DC	69.28
85		Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP	Silicon Valley	69.05
86		Paul Hastings LLP	Washington, DC	68.85
87	72	Susman Godfrey L.L.P.	Houston	68.79
88		Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy LLP	New York	68.78
89	74	Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP	Washington, DC	68.63
90		Fenwick & West LLP	Silicon Valley	68.50
91		Winston & Strawn LLP	Chicago	68.42
92	62	Jones Day	Atlanta	68.11
93	91	Cahill Gordon & Reindel LLP	New York	67.61
94		O'Melveny & Myers LLP	Washington, DC	67.54
95	43	Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP and Affiliates	Boston	67.41
96		Jones Day	Dallas	67.38
97	79	Morrison & Foerster LLP	Los Angeles	66.98
98		Keker & Van Nest LLP	San Francisco	66.91
98	86	Fish & Richardson	Boston	66.91
99		White & Case	Miami	66.84
100	71	Sidley Austin LLP	San Francisco	66.74

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Over the summer, we conducted the ATL Law Firm Reputation Survey, asking those of you working in Biglaw to rate your peers and competitors. Included in these rankings were market-specific questions, inquiring about both the reputation of firms in each survey participant's city as well as each firm's desirability as a potential employer. In creating the survey, we limited our city-specific firm choices to offices with at least 50 lawyers. Our office rankings include the following markets: Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Silicon Valley and Washington, DC.

Firms are rated on a scale with 100 possible points:

• Market-specific reputation survey*
  “Strength and quality of practice”: 35%
  “Potential employer”: 15%
• Leverage
  Ratio of equity partners to all other attorneys: 5%
• Growth/decay
  % change in headcount since 2010: 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%***

Clearly, 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.

* We limited our city-specific firm choices to offices with at least 50 lawyers. Survey conducted in partnership with Kinney Recruiting.
** Promotion data courtesy of NavForward.
*** 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 survey data.

 

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