ALM

For law firms and legal departments, there may be no issue that attracts as much sheer curiosity as: When it comes to landing legal work, which firms are hunting and catching the big game? The biggest U.S. companies inevitably hire a slew of law firms each year in the United States and beyond, but it's often challenging to pull back the curtain to discover which firms are getting the work and why.

The latest Who Represents America's Biggest Companies survey by our sibling publication Corporate Counsel attempts to answer the question of “which firms” by assembling PACER data for the Fortune 1000 in 10 key litigation practice areas for the calendar year 2016. The data generally focuses on NLJ 350-sized firms but also touches on smaller firms that are highly active in certain practice areas.

We also looked at “how” firms are hired by speaking to some general counsel and other in-house lawyers in charge of outside firm hiring and evaluation. What we discovered is that no matter what their specific methodology may be, legal departments are getting ever more thoughtful and disciplined about how they choose their outside help.

CHART: Working Together Our annual look at which firms are getting the work from large companies.

CHART: Chart Toppers We pre­sent the most popular law firms that leave a paper trail about the work that they do for large American clients.