| How we report law firm financials
The Am Law 100 is reported by staff members at ALM’s publications throughout the United States, including The American Lawyer, The Connecticut Law Tribune, Daily Business Review (Miami), Fulton County Daily Report (Atlanta), The Legal Intelligencer (Philadelphia), Legal Times (Washington, D.C.), New Jersey Law Journal, New York Law Journal, The Recorder (San Francisco), and Texas Lawyer.
Most law firms provide their financials voluntarily for this report. Some choose not to cooperate, so we call partners and calculate revenue and profits. But all data is investigated by our reporters. In the event that an error in reporting is discovered, we will correct the numbers and base the percentage changes in future years on restated numbers.
What we Publish
Gross Revenue is fee income from legal work only. It does not include disbursements or income from nonlegal ancillary businesses.
Net is compensation paid to equity partners.
Equity Partners are those who file a Schedule K-1 tax form and receive no more than half their compensation on a fixed-income basis.
Nonequity Partners are those who receive more than half their compensation on a fixed basis.
Total Full-Time Equivalent Lawyers for firms whose fiscal year ends after August 31, 2007, are provided as of that date. If the firm’s fiscal year ended between March 31 and August 31, 2007, we ask for the head count at the end of the firm’s fiscal year. This is intended to exclude first-year associates, who typically start in the fall but take several months to produce revenue. Retired partners and of counsel are not counted as partners, nor are payments made to them counted in net-operating income.
How we crunch the numbers
Revenue Per Lawyer is calculated by dividing the gross revenue by the number of lawyers.
Profits Per Partner are calculated by dividing net operating income by number of equity partners.
Compensation-All Partners is calculated by adding per-partner profits to compensation paid to nonequity partners.
Average Compensation-All Partners is the net operating income plus compensation to nonequity partners, divided by the number of equity and nonequity partners.
Value Per Lawyer is calculated by dividing the compensation�all partners by the total number of lawyers. We then divide that figure by $10 million to see how many lawyers it takes to generate that amount.
Profitability Index includes leverage, which is the ratio of all lawyers to equity partners, and profit margin, which is the ratio of net operating income to gross revenue multiplied by 100. It also can be obtained by dividing profits per partner by revenue per lawyer.
Our conventions
On the poster and the A to Z chart, firm names are spelled out in their long form. On all other charts we publish shortened firm names.
We round gross revenue and net operating income to the nearest $500,000. Profits per partner, revenue per lawyer, and compensation�all partners are rounded to the nearest $5,000.
Firms that are tied in the rankings are listed in alphabetical order.
How we designate location
We identify some firms as “international” or “national,” rather than identifying them by city, based on the percentage of the firm’s attorneys in various regions of the country and the percentage that work outside the U.S.
Those breakouts are obtained from the most recent National Law Journal NLJ 250 survey. If 40 percent or more of the firm’s lawyers were located outside the U.S., we identify the firm as international. If no more than 45 percent of the firm’s attorneys were located in any one region of the country, we identify the firm as national.
Designation of Regions and Markets We use the following classifications for identifying the geographical concentration of a firm’s offices and attorneys:
- New England: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont
- New York City
- Mid-Atlantic: Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, New York State (excluding New York City), Northern Virginia, and Pennsylvania
- Washington, D.C.
- South and Southeast: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Southern Virginia, Tennessee, and West Virginia
- Midwest: Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota, and Wisconsin
- West and Southwest: Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Texas, Utah, and Wyoming
- West Coast/Pacific Rim: Alaska, California, Hawaii, Oregon, and Washington State
�Rosemarie Clancy ([email protected]) and John O’Connor ([email protected])
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