ALMResearchBlog

Survey: Firms Improve Diversity Efforts In Response to GC Pressure

A new survey from Altman Weil, and reported in the Daily Report says that under increasing pressure from general counsel to diversify their personnel, law firms are making some progress. Altman Weil canvassed the firms in the The Am Law 200. Of the 80 respondents, 58% have a designated diversity manager or director, up 8 percentage points from 2007 and 13 percentage points from 2005, the first year the survey was conducted. Also, the survey found that 100% of participants report having a diversity committee in their firm, up from 96% from the previous year. One area of concern, according Altman Weil, is that those diversity directors are increasingly not full time on the job but often are practicing attorneys with billable-hour requirements. The number of diversity managers who work full time in the position is down from 61% in 2007 to 53% in 2008.

How diverse are these biglaw firms? See the recently published Diversity Scorecard, available in searchable spreadsheet form from ALM Research Online for the years 2001 through 2008. Data from previous years (starting in 1984) is available to subscribers only.

More on Business Development

Tom Kane has another good post, More on Business Development in a Recession, on his Legal Marketing Blog, which focuses on “adjusting the four “P’s” (Product, Place, Promotion, Price) of marketing as one way to develop business in these troubled times.”

Speaking of which, our third Business Development Practices Survey Report is now available in the ALM Research Store. For those not familiar with this survey, ALM Research has been tracking the role of business development in law firms since 2005—budgets, staffing, compensation for business development managers, strategies used, and the overall organizational structure of the business development effort. While it is still housed within the marketing department in most firms, the largest of firms (those at the top of the Am Law 100, the Global 100, and the NLJ 250) now see business development as a separate function from the firm’s marketing efforts. Read more about it here.

More on The Am Law 100

The buzz about The Am Law 100 continues. ALM’s newspaper in Washington, DC, Legal Times has its own list, the D.C. 20 (subscription required), which ranks the top firms in the DC area based on revenues in those offices. (The Am Law 100 ranks firms based on their firmwide revenues.) The top three firms were Hogan & Hartson, Wilmer Cutler, and Skadden—though Legal Times poses the probability that Skadden just might be on the verge of becoming the top firm soon. New York-based Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom topped the profits per partner rankings, with $2,280,000 per equity partner, on average, but Latham & Watkins was right behind them, with $2,270,000 PPP. Third-place ranking went to McDermott, Will & Emery, with a mere $1,520,000 PPP.

The 2008 Am Law 100 is available in searchable spreadsheet format through the ALM Research Store, and data from all previous years' surveys (starting in 1985) is available to ALM Research Online subscribers.

Survey: Managing Partners’ Gloomy Outlook

As the BLT (Blog of the Legal Times) notes, it is no surprise that the 2008 first quarter Managing Partner Confidence Index, released this week by Citi Private Bank Law Firm Group, depicts a gloomy outlook on the economy’s impact on law firms. This is the fifth index released by Citi Private Bank, and it marks the first time that managing partners were, on average, more negative than positive in their responses. Dozens of U.S. managing partners participate in the survey, and this quarter, U.K. managing partners were also included for the first time.

We had posted previously on this blog results from  several managing partner surveys, including the last one from Citi Private Bank, The American Lawyer, and Legal Times. There appears to be a general consensus that a weak 2008 will bring fewer equity partner promotions, longer hours, and higher rates.

The Am Law 100: In the News

The Am Law 100, the legal industry's equivalent of the Fortune 500, was released yesterday and it seems everyone has lots to say about those numbers--available, by the way, through the ALM Research Online Store (free to subscribers; $275 for non-subscribers). First of all,The American Lawyer magazine has a variety of stories which look at the 100 from various angles, including:

• Lessons of The Am Law 100 (“The big firms just finished the best five-year economic run since we began keeping records.”);
• Behind the Numbers (“Am Law 100 firms all have high gross revenues, but when it comes to translating that money into payouts for equity partners, the similarities end. Average profits per partner among the firms vary widely, from a low of $410,000 at Littler Mendelson to a high of $4.945 million at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz.”);
• The Sky’s the Limit (“Profits per partner of $20 million? Revenues of $23 billion? A business school professor offers startling projections for the Am Law 100 of 2025”); and
• Trouble at Heller Ehrman (“Heller Ehrman has suffered a relentless plague of partner defections. Can management end the pain?”).

And now other media have begun to weigh in:

• 2007 Was a Year to Feast, but Is It a Prelude to Famine? On Law.com's Legal Blog Watch (“2007 was a banner year for the nation's top law firms according to the much anticipated American Lawyer 2008 Am Law 100 Report, which hit the streets today.”);
• Is the Golden Age of Growth Over? On the Wall St. Journal Law Blog (“For a lot of law-firm managing-partner types, today is a big day, as the AmLaw 100 hits their in-boxes. The AmLaw 100, or the American Lawyer magazine’s annual list of the top-grossing law firms for the year previous, represents not only a boatload of work for AmLaw staffers. For law firm heads, it’s a report card of sorts.”)
• How New York Firms Fared, from New York Lawyer (“Despite a looming recession, most of New York's top law firms reached new economic heights in 2007.”); and of course
• All Hail the Am Law 100! on the Above the Law Blog.

Just think-- we get to go through this again next month when the second half of The Am Law 200 is published!

Fortune 500: Winners, Losers

The corporations at the top of this year’s Fortune 500 aren’t exactly surprising: Wal-Mart, Exxon, Chevron, GM, Conoco Phillips. And the “biggest losers,” as Fortune calls them, are not exactly surprising either. GM managed to make both lists, along with two companies very much enmeshed in the sub-prime crisis—Freddie Mac and Merrill Lynch—the struggling Sprint Nextel, and the “perpetual No. 2 of PC chipmakers,” Advanced Micro Devices.

For quick reference to who counsels these and other companies and organizations, see the ALM Research Store and products such as Big Deals & Big Suits and Corporate Representation (Who Counsels Who).

Just Released: The Am Law 100

The 2008 Am Law 100 spreadsheet and data are now available through ALM Research Online. As always, the sortable spreadsheet of America’s highest-grossing law firms contains even more than what you see in print. All the data from the charts published in the May issue of The American Lawyer, as well as contact information for key marketing personnel at the firms.

Speaking of which—The American Lawyer’s main story accompanying the annual rankings asks: Is the Golden Age Over? with the lead-in “Big firms just finished the best five years since we began our records. Now, head count and salaries outpace revenue and rates.”  Click here for the story, as well as a number of charts showing changes over the years.

Laterals Not Common in Plaintiffs Firms

An interesting piece by The Legal Intelligencer notes that lateral movements are rather uncommon in the plaintiffs bar, though very common among defense attorneys. The story also mentions, however, that some law firm leaders said they lateral movement among plaintiffs attorneys do happen but go largely unnoticed by most of the legal community.

Checking our 2007 Lateral Partner Movements spreadsheet, we noted that there were 328 moves recorded among litigators last year. Unfortunately, our data doesn’t track information about which side of the bar these partners practice on, but those in the business might be able to see at a glance what the trends are.

Free Webinar: Sneak Preview of the AmLaws

Today at 3:00 p.m. ET, 12:00 PDT, editor in chief of The American Lawyer, Aric Press, will host a 15-minute free webinar to discuss the 2008 Am Law 100, offering insight and analysis about why this year's numbers are so impressive. Register here or by visiting the home page of AmericanLawyer.com (bottom right).

Just Released: 2008 Diversity Scorecard

The new 2008 Diversity Scorecard spreadsheet is now available through the ALM Research Online Store. Based on the survey published every spring by the Minority Law Journal, Diversity Scorecard contains detailed information on minority legal staffing levels at law firms in NLJ 250 and Am Law 200 firms. This report also includes supplemental data not published by MLJ, including the number of women attorneys employed at these firms.

Key data points include: number of U.S. citizen attorneys; number of minority attorneys; specific figures for four major ethnic/racial groups ( African-American attorneys, Asian-American attorneys, and Hispanic-American attorneys); figures for other minority attorneys, including Native American and multiracial attorneys; breakdown by partner and non-partner attorneys; number of women attorneys. Note that the methodology for Diversity Scorecard was changed slightly this year. Firms were asked to count only their minority attorneys who are employed in U.S. offices. That number was then divided by the number of attorneys at the firm who are employed in the U.S. The result gives the percentage of a firm's U.S. attorneys who are members of ethnic minorities. Rankings are based on this percentage.

Diversity Scorecard data is available from ALM Research for the following years: 1985, 1986, 1989, 1991, 1993, 1997, 1999, 2002—2008.