Profits per partner? Would that be equity-only or equity and non-equity?
How about revenue per lawyer? And have you accounted for
recourse and non-recourse debt? Don’t New York billing rates skew
the numbers? And, most important, is the annual obsession with the AmLaw
100 financial bakeoff "corrosive and debilitating," "tyrannizing," with
a "trail of carnage" in its wake? At the end of the day, not
everyone can be Wachtel.
Navel-gazing notwithstanding, the AmLaw 100 is here to stay. My
view is that the sophisticated audience for these numbers is more than
equipped to separate signal from noise, to suss out trends, and to structure
their own firm’s incentives to align with their strategic and practice-group
goals. In this case, at least, "you get what you pay for" is vitally
true.
Let the games begin.
