AM Law 100 - Summary

Some interesting items in the AM Law 100 2008 report:

The recent run of growth and profitability among the AM Law 100 firms has been significant. Since 2003, average revenue per lawyer (RPL) has increased by $205,000. Profit growth was even more impressive. Since 2003, the average profit per partner (PPP) has increased from $860,000 to $1.3 million.

Why the increase? The American Lawyer study reached the follwoing conclusions:

• surging demand for high-end legal services
• unrelenting annual rate hikes.
• benefits of hard work
  
• dramatic slowdown in the naming of new equity partners

The Am Law 100 report also noted:

• Total revenues for this group was $64.5 billion
• Nineteen firms had profits per partner of $2 million or more (Wachtell, Lipton led with a PPP of $4.9 million)
• Average RPL of New York firms was $1.1 million, average RPL for firms born elsewhere was $780,000.
• Head count grew by 6.8 percent to 77,816 lawyers.
• The fastest-growing category of attorneys was nonequity partners, at 35 percent of all partners.