The long run - a 25-year view of the Am Law 100

Twenty-five years since the first Am Law 100 table, some fundamental patterns in the world's largest legal market can be seen. Michael Goldhaber reports

By the numbers, Joseph Tate may be the luckiest lateral of the past 25 years. When Tate moved to Dechert from Schnader Harrison Segal & Lewis in 1991, he was moving from one top five Philadelphia firm to another. As it turned out, he was also moving from the firm that dropped the most ranks by size in the past quarter of a century to the one that gained the most ranks in profits per equity partner (PEP), among firms on the original Am Law 100 list (for fiscal year 1986).

Since 1986, Schnader has been overtaken by 173 law firms, as it fell to 246th by lawyer headcount, placing it at the cusp of falling off The National Law Journal's NLJ 250. Meanwhile, Dechert leapfrogged 52 firms, as it grew its PEP nearly tenfold, from $220,000 (£137,000) in 1986 to $2.11m (£1.31m) in 2011. "I would never have imagined the growth that we've had," Tate adds.