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WHAT WE'RE WATCHING

WELCOME TO THE CLUB - The American Lawyer's Super Rich Law Firms list is still exclusive, but this year it's a little less "15-minute trip on Jeff Bezos' spaceship" exclusive and a little more "Costco Executive Membership" exclusive. Still good though! As Law.com's Ben Seal writes, a year after the thresholds to gain entry were elevated to account for the Am Law 100's pandemic success story in 2020, the group of Super Rich firms has expanded by 34%—from 31 firms to 40—in the wake of an even more profitable sequel. To make the Super Rich list, firms must have revenue per lawyer of at least $1.1 million and profits per lawyer of at least $550,000—markers that indicate an organization is getting the most out of everyone it employs. Demand over the past two years has been "insatiable," McDermott chair Ira Coleman told Seal, and that has been the biggest contributor to the newfound level of prosperity across the industry. But Coleman also cautioned that firm leaders would be wise to recognize that demand is a fickle factor in their success. No matter how much top-to-bottom talent or structural integrity a firm has at its disposal, an unexpected dip in demand would threaten budgets across the Am Law 100. As Coleman quite succinctly put it: "Don't get too high on your own supply." Explore the entire 2022 Am Law 100 report here.

OPERATING EXPENSES - Legal ops professionals are priceless—like, literally, there's apparently no set price for them. Compensation for heads of legal ops ranges from $100,000 to $400,000, according to Brightflag's recently released Corporate Legal Operations Survey, with pay highly correlated to legal department size. "Legal operations is still very much the Wild West of in-house legal department management. Even sophisticated legal departments have found it challenging to find the right mix of talent and experience for legal operations roles, and many struggle to determine what a fair price for that talent should be," Jason Winmill, managing partner at Boston-based legal department consulting firm Argopoint, told Law.com's Trudy Knockless. "At more junior levels, operational talent from other parts of the business continues to migrate into legal operations, creating new generations of legal operations professionals," he said. Winmill said companies that struggle to hire at the management level for legal operations should look to leadership-minded individuals who already support their legal departments in finance, information technology and human resources. "A quick look through the profiles of legal operations leaders at Fortune 100 companies suggests many, if not most, started their careers in legal operations in that exact way," he said.

WHO GOT THE WORK?℠ - Martin R. Martos II and Gabrielle Winslow of Fox Rothschild have stepped in to defend iRobot Corporation in a pending consumer class action. The suit, filed March 10 in Illinois Northern District Court by Frankfort Law Group, contends that iRobot knowingly sold defective Roomba vacuums to consumers and charged consumers $59 for a repair kit that did not remedy the defect. The case, assigned to U.S. District Judge Martha M. Pacold, is 1:22-cv-01290, Toolis v. iRobot Corporation.  >> Read the filing on Law.com Radar  and check out the most recent edition of Law.com's Who Got the Work?℠ column to find out which law firms and lawyers are being brought in to handle key cases and close major deals for their clients.