Let's be clear: in this market, the "best" law firm is the one that will employ you. If you have a job, congratulations, you're number one. 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.

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? Power, post-recession, is about what you are, not what you used to be.

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. The Power 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 against the competition.

Rank	2015 Rank	Firm	Score
1	6	Cravath, Swaine & Moore	81.41
2	14	Boies, Schiller & Flexner	79.84
3	7	Simpson Thacher & Bartlett	78.87
4	11	Latham & Watkins	78.74
5	2	Kirkland & Ellis	78.50
6	10	Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom	78.37
7	5	Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison	78.28
8	4	Sullivan & Cromwell	78.27
9	3	Davis Polk & Wardwell	78.19
10	12	Covington & Burling	77.01
11	8	Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher	76.37
12	9	Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton	76.36
13	13	Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan	75.98
14	1	Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz	75.48
15	18	Sidley Austin	75.28
16	20	Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr	74.73
17	15	Weil, Gotshal & Manges	74.71
18	34	Williams & Connolly	73.16
19	17	Debevoise & Plimpton	71.51
20	21	Jones Day	70.82
21	22	Cahill Gordon & Reindel	70.76
22	32	Shearman & Sterling	70.73
23	24	Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati	69.83
24	19	Ropes & Gray	69.64
25	59	Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld	69.42
26	46	Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy	69.24
27	43	Willkie Farr & Gallagher	68.90
28	41	O'Melveny & Myers	68.89
29	30	Perkins Coie	68.69
30	60	White & Case	68.31
31	25	Cooley	68.22
32	35	Mayer Brown	67.99
33	29	Morrison & Foerster	67.98
34	27	Paul Hastings LLP	67.83
35	28	McDermott Will & Emery	67.74
36	48	Goodwin Procter	67.10
37	23	Arnold & Porter	67.02
38	44	Hogan Lovells	66.89
39	39	Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe	66.25
39	78	Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft	66.25
39	47	Irell & Manella	66.25
40	38	Fish & Richardson	65.89
41	42	Proskauer Rose	65.75
42	16	Munger Tolles & Olson	65.08
43	49	Alston & Bird	65.01
44	40	Morgan, Lewis & Bockius	64.81
45	54	King & Spalding	63.84
46	37	Vinson & Elkins	63.68
47	86	Baker & McKenzie	63.20
48	58	Fried Frank Harris Shriver & Jacobson	63.14
49	26	K&L Gates	62.60
50	62	Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman	62.46
51	56	Steptoe & Johnson LLP	62.14
52	55	DLA Piper	62.06
53	57	Baker & Hostetler	62.01
54	52	Baker Botts	61.60
55	71	Winston & Strawn	61.21
56	31	Greenberg Traurig	60.78
57	81	Norton Rose Fulbright	60.77
58	66	Foley and Lardner	60.62
59	51	Dentons	60.59
60	69	Sheppard Mullin	60.45
61	63	Dechert	60.23
62	50	Reed Smith	60.04
63	85	Squire Patton Boggs	59.91
64	84	Katten Muchin Rosenman	59.27
65	64	Troutman Sanders	58.75
66	68	Haynes and Boone	58.37
67	80	Bryan Cave	58.10
68	45	Fenwick & West	57.54
69	87	Susman Godfrey	57.32
70	33	Kilpatrick Townsend	57.18
71	89	Crowell & Moring	57.17
72	82	Drinker Biddle & Reath	57.07
73	88	Seyfarth Shaw	56.94
74	72	Bracewell & Giuliani	54.86
75	61	Nixon Peabody	54.68
76		Stoel Rives	54.33
77	77	McGuireWoods	54.14
78	65	Pepper Hamilton	54.10
79		Foley Hoag	54.06
80	75	Shook, Hardy & Bacon	53.42
81	36	Jenner & Block	53.31
82	70	Hunton & Williams	53.16
83		Venable	52.91
84	53	Mintz Levin	52.48
85	92	Dorsey & Whitney	52.41
86		Andrews Kurth	52.30
87	79	Davis Wright Tremaine	51.76
88		Schiff Hardin	51.15
89	100	Ballard Spahr	51.04
90	76	Locke Lord LLP	50.49
91	67	Wiley Rein	50.42
92		Duane Morris	50.15
93	90	Knobbe Martens Olson & Bear	50.10
94	99	Blank Rome	49.44
95	74	Holland & Knight	49.41
96		Quarles & Brady	49.35
97	73	Littler Mendelson	49.28
98		Kaye Scholer	49.16
99		Loeb & Loeb	49.02
100		Schulte Roth & Zabel	48.94

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This past summer, we conducted the ATL Law Firm Reputation Survey, asking those of you working in Biglaw to rate your peers and competitors. For our purposes, we split “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.)

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%***

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.

* Survey conducted in partnership with Kinney Recruiting.
** Data for the "partnership prospects" metric 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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