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For years, the NLJ 500 (and before that, the NLJ 250) was the only game in town when it came to ranking the top law firms. Well, the Am Law 100 (and 200!) existed too, but the NLJ 500 was the only ranking that would tell you exactly how many lawyers the firm employed!
But as we explained yesterday, the National Law Journal has some competition!!! The Law360 400 (Law760?) ranks the largest U.S.-based law firms based on… exactly how many lawyers the firm employs.
With not one but two rankings based exclusively on counting, we at Above the Law felt the public demand for rankings still has room for more superfluous saturation. So without further ado, we present our latest ranking, the first annual Top 100 A to Z Law Firms:
- Akerman
- Akin Gump
- Alston & Bird
- Arnold & Porter
- Baker & Hostetler
- Baker Botts
- Baker McKenzie
- Ballard Spahr
- Barnes & Thornburg
- Blank Rome
- Bryan Cave
- Cadwalader
- Cahill
- Cleary Gottlieb
- Cooley
- Covington
- Cozen O’Connor
- Cravath
- Crowell & Moring
- Davis Polk
- Davis Wright
- Debevoise
- Dechert
- DLA Piper
- Dorsey
- Duane Morris
- Faegre Drinker
- Fenwick
- Fish
- Foley & Lardner
- Fox Rothschild
- Fragomen
- Fried Frank
- Gibson Dunn
- Goodwin Procter
- Gordon Rees
- Greenberg Traurig
- Haynes and Boone
- Hogan Lovells
- Holland & Knight
- Hunton Andrews
- Husch Blackwell
- Jackson Lewis
- Jenner & Block
- Jones Day
- K&L Gates
- Katten
- Kilpatrick Townsend
- King & Spalding
- Kirkland
- Kramer Levin
- Latham
- Lewis Brisbois
- Littler
- Locke Lord
- Loeb & Loeb
- Mayer Brown
- McDermott
- McGuireWoods
- Milbank
- Mintz Levin
- Morgan Lewis
- Morrison & Foerster
- Nelson Mullins
- Nixon Peabody
- Norton Rose
- O’Melveny
- Ogletree Deakins
- Orrick
- Paul Hastings
- Paul Weiss
- Perkins Coie
- Pillsbury
- Polsinelli
- Proskauer
- Quinn Emanuel
- Reed Smith
- Ropes & Gray
- Schulte Roth
- Seyfarth
- Shearman & Sterling
- Sheppard Mullin
- Sidley
- Simpson Thacher
- Skadden
- Squire Patton
- Steptoe
- Sullivan & Cromwell
- Taft Stettinius
- Troutman Pepper
- Venable
- Vinson & Elkins
- Wachtell
- Weil
- White & Case
- Willkie
- Wilmer
- Wilson Sonsini
- Winston & Strawn
- Womble Bond
Kudos to Thompson & Knight for rocketing up this list by a whopping 50 slots this year!
Now you might think our methodology merely involved taking the Am Law 100 and alphabetizing them, but you’d be wrong — we also put in the numbers.
In all seriousness, the NLJ 500 is a stupid ranking. And we’ve said so for years. An ultimately vapid exercise in rankings clickbait using the most superficial sorting mechanism available. Firm size does “matter” but only to the extent you feed that into a function to figure out revenue per lawyer. It’s like measuring a baseball player on total plate appearances without bothering to ask what happened next. On its own the ranking is just the easiest possible way to throw together a ranking. To see Law360 also in the ranking game and opt for the another “simple counting” approach is downright frustrating.
Rankings are hard work, but there’s a lot you can show the industry about itself applying a clever philosophy to a ranking. And then there’s also a lot you can show by applying a simplistic philosophy to a ranking and calling it a day.
Earlier: Dueling Rankings Of The Biggest Biglaw Firms In The Country (2022)
The 500 Largest Law Firms
Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.
