(Illustration: LaMonte Ayers/ALM)

Atlanta continues to be a hot location for national firms seeking an entree into the Southeastern legal market.

The city has gained six Am Law firms since the beginning of 2018. (But another, Sherman & Howard, closed its two-lawyer outpost here.)

Atlanta is now home to 48 Am Law 100 and Second Hundred firms, The American Lawyers' designation for the 200 highest-grossing firms in the country, with local offices ranging from several hundred lawyers at homegrown giants King & Spalding and Alston & Bird to outposts with just a handful.

Of those, two-thirds are Am Law 100 (including five Atlanta-based firms) and the others are Second Hundred.

That said, the Daily Report's chart displaying 2018 financials for the city's Am Law firms shows only the 47 firms that had an Atlanta office last year. The 48th, the Midwest's Shook Hardy & Bacon (No. 103 in the Am Law ranking), just arrived on the scene on June 8, launching an Atlanta location with three product liability partners from Alston & Bird.

Squire Patton Boggs (No. 34), a global firm with Ohio roots, opened an Atlanta office in February 2018 led by a trio of corporate and litigation partners from Dentons. Since then the office, which started with seven lawyers, has grown to 13, and local managing partner Ann-Marie McGaughey said Squire aims to develop it into a full service location.

In March 2018, Dinsmore & Shohl (No. 124), based in Cincinnati, opened a small, three-lawyer office headed by labor and employment litigator Terry Finnerty, who came from Ford & Finnerty.

Florida firm Akerman (No. 94) quietly opened its own Atlanta office last September, led by Sidney Welch, who'd headed Polsinelli's health care innovation practice. That office is up to five partners after Akerman in May landed corporate partners Bill Ide and Amanda Leech from Dentons. Ide is a former American Bar Association president and spent 26 years at Dentons and predecessor firm McKenna Long & Aldridge.

Philadelphia's Fox Rothschild (No. 74) gained an 18-lawyer office in Atlanta with its Nov. 1 acquisition of Smith Moore Leatherwood, based in North Carolina. Fox has added a couple of lawyers since then and the firm's chairman, Mark Silow, said it aims to expand its new Atlanta location to as many as 50 lawyers in the next few years.

Fast-growing Southeastern firm Butler Snow already had a 10-lawyer Atlanta office, but it broke into the Am Law 200 ranking for the first time this year, debuting at No. 155.

Sherman & Howard (No. 189), based in Colorado, closed its two-partner Atlanta outpost at the end of 2018 when John Wymer III and Bryan Stillwagon moved their labor and employment practice to another Am Law firm, Thompson Hine (No. 137).

Atlanta-Based Nine

The 2018 revenue range for Atlanta's nine homegrown firms spans from King & Spalding's $1.26 billion gross to Arnall Golden Gregory's $106 million.

Ranked in order of revenue, they are: King & Spalding (No. 22); Alston & Bird (No. 52); Troutman Sanders (No. 68); Ogletree, Deakins, Nash, Smoak & Stewart (No. 73); Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton (No. 78); Fisher & Phillips (No. 147); Morris, Manning & Martin (No. 170); Smith, Gambrell & Russell (No. 187); and Arnall Golden Gregory (No. 192).

Two-thirds of the nine Atlanta-based firms outperformed their national cohort in 2018 revenue growth, causing them to jump a few spots higher in this year's ranking.

Nationally, the Am Law 100 averaged 8% revenue growth last year. Of Atlanta's five Am Law 100 firms, King & Spalding bested that with a 10.8% revenue increase and Ogletree with a 8.6% increase.

Nationally, the Second Hundred averaged just over 3% revenue growth. All four of Atlanta's Second Hundred firms grew revenue at much higher rates. Smith Gambrell reported a 12.1% revenue increase, and Fisher Phillips reported 9.5% revenue growth. Morris Manning's revenue grew 7.4%, and Arnall Golden reported a 6.9% increase.

Among the plethora of Am Law 100 and Second Hundred firms now resident in Atlanta, the city's nine homegrown firms still dominate in terms of local office size, but other Am Law firms, namely Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough, Jones Day and Greenberg Traurig, have established local offices with more than 100 lawyers.

King & Spalding has the most Atlanta lawyers, at 400, followed by Alston & Bird with 333. The other Am Law firms with more than 100 Atlanta lawyers are (in descending order): Troutman; Kilpatrick Townsend; Morris Manning; Nelson Mullins; Arnall Golden; Jones Day; Smith Gambrell; and Greenberg Traurig.

Eversheds Sutherland is among the city's largest local offices, with about 160 lawyers, but it dropped off the Am Law ranking last year because more than half its roughly 2,300 lawyers are resident outside the United States. The firm formed in 2017 from Atlanta-based Sutherland Asbill & Brennan's trans-Atlantic tie-up with the U.K.'s Eversheds.

Global firm Dentons, which entered the city in 2015 by acquiring Atlanta-based McKenna Long & Aldridge, similarly is not included in the Am Law ranking, because the majority of its lawyers are outside the United States. Dentons' local office has about 60 lawyers.