McKee Nelson based in Washington, D.C., is a relatively young firm, though it has grown quickly. The firm made its first appearance on the Am Law 200 (firms ranked by gross revenue) in 2004 and by 2006 was ranked at 139. On the NLJ 250 (firms ranked by attorney head count), the firm made its first appearance in 2006, in last place, at 250.
What concerns us here is the firm’s absence from the recently-published New York Law Journal Book of Lists. This compilation lays out as full a picture of law firm activity in New York as we can collect, with attorney counts, revenue information and practice specialties. McKee Nelson has carved out a niche in mortgage-backed securities and asset-backed securities, both as issuer’s counsel and underwriter’s counsel, which causes it to be ranked on the Corporate Scorecard for those categories above firms several times its size. And yet.
And yet. In the 2007 New York Law Journal Book of Lists, in the capital markets section, not a single mention of McKee Nelson is to be found, even though the firm has a large and vibrant New York City office. The reason is very simple, and starts, as these situations often do, in the methodology of a given compilation or survey. To be eligible for the NYLJ Book of Lists, a firm must be included on the NYLJ 100, the New York Law Journal’s annual December list of New York law firms, ranked by New York head count. Or, it must be a New York-based firm.
The one hundredth spot on the most recent NYLJ 100 is shared by Damon & Morey, with 77 attorneys in Buffalo, and Thelen, Reid & Priest, with the same number in Manhattan. (Thelen has since merged with New York-based Brown Raysman Millstein Felder & Steiner; McKee Nelson’s New York office had seventy-five attorneys, according to the 2006NLJ 250 – just two attorneys shy of making the NYLJ 100 list.
Thus, because a spot on the NYLJ 100 is a condition precedent to appearing in the NYLJ Book of Lists, for firms based outside of New York State, McKee Nelson was absent from all but one list in the Book of Lists. (The firm’s New York office was included in the “Most Satisfied Midlevels” list.)
None of this, of course, takes anything away from the firm’s enviable accomplishment in the area of mortgage-backed securities or asset-backed securities. It merely explains why those accomplishments are not highlighted in the particular milieu called the NYLJ Book of Lists. Methodology, of course, is all.
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