If I've heard it once, I've heard it a thousand times, most often from a Big Law partner: “All law firms are alike.” At first blush, this is understandable in several respects.

First, the fundamentals of the practice of law, such as billing time, acquiring and working with clients and being held accountable for your performance, are deeply ingrained in virtually every firm. Second, how firms present themselves, via verbiage on their websites and marketing materials, and even in the language they use to describe their firms, is also remarkably similar. For instance, can you name more than a few firms that don't extol their great client service and “no jerk” policy in hiring?

These commonalities feed into the perception that firms really don't differ all that much. While I understand the roots of the belief, I disagree with it, and will share four reasons why I believe all law firms are not alike. In so doing, I am excluding an obvious differentiator, such as significant size variances. After all, it is a given that working in a 2,000-plus lawyer firm, with offices across the globe, is much different from practicing in a five-lawyer, single practice boutique. I endeavor to go much deeper than that type of distinction.

• Managing partners and other key leaders vary, sometimes widely, as to their  governing abilities.

Leadership, perhaps even more so in law firms, really matters. Things trickle down from the top and the attributes of a firm's managing partner, and its other key leaders, permeate the organization. If you doubt this, look at what has happened in some firms when there has been a change at the helm.

There are some firms that have been humming along for decades that rather quickly have made turns for the worse when a new leader/management team has made some critical missteps. Diminished profits, missed draws and parades of lawyers marching out the door, are indicia of what can happen when an ill-equipped leader is selected. Conversely, an energetic, inspirational managing partner, who can look a step or two ahead, and is not afraid of taking some chances, can have an outsized, positive impact on a firm and that, too, can occur post-haste.

In looking back at an 18-year career of placing lateral partners/groups, I can hardly think of a single partner, especially among the most elite producers, who struggled with leaving due to his deep-seated affinity for the firm's managing  partner or other leader who had a big influence on his day-to-day life. If such a relationship existed, or a partner otherwise respected what the leaders had done for a firm, the odds are extraordinarily high that someone would stay put. If the converse were true, it opens the door for that partner to more critically evaluate perceived issues in the firm and to be much more receptive to learning about advantages of another firm, which often make it easier for that lawyer to depart.

So, firms that may seem, from the outside, to be indistinguishable, may be quite different when the curtain is pulled back to reveal how a firm's Wizard of Oz, and his team of leaders, are actually influencing what a firm is doing and where it is headed.

• Cultures vary.

I truly believe the vast majority of firms should be applauded for the time they spend developing their young lawyers, encouraging and supporting charitable and pro bono work and creating environments in which doing the right thing is not a maxim, but a reality.

Nonetheless, there are other areas, when one gets more granular, that are difference markers and better determine a firm's true culture, and not the common bromides of how collaborative or team-oriented a firm is. This matter of culture is crucial, as former GE CEO Jack Welch noted, when he asserted that “culture drives great results.”

When one digs deeper, you may find that a firm: stands by its lawyers and staff when they have a year that was dominated by dealing with an illness or family issue, does not unduly penalize a lawyer who had a one- or two-year blip in fees due to losing clients that were merged out of existence, or really has an esprit de corps, that, despite the rigors of practicing law, enables the lawyers and staff to actually enjoy working together.

On the other hand, you won't learn on a website or in public pronouncements that another firm, which may have almost identical performance metrics, is one in which: some partners are reluctant to join in a new client pitch if they are not going to get a share of the credit, lawyers beg off going to a dinner to help recruit a star lateral who is not in their practice area, or an environment has been created in which many partners dig in their heels in going to their clients to get a waiver when a thorny conflict issue arises with another partner's client, even though that waiver could yield a big fee for the firm.

When you ask lawyers to candidly describe their firms' cultures, factors like theses are the ones they cite, pro and con, which better illustrate how different seemingly similar firms really are.

• Compensation differs.

While compensation is not everything, it matters, and should, since lawyers work very hard and merit an appropriate amount of pay. Putting aside the reality that partners sometimes must move to get up to market, lawyers often believe that peers in comparable firms generally are paid about the same. They especially feel that way if a perceived comparable firm has similar profits per partner or average partner compensation.

In fact, compensation systems can vary quite a bit: some are open, while others are closed. Some firms have highly subjective systems, while others have not a shred of subjectivity, as they are solely objective. No matter the type of system, factors such as rates, working attorney receipts, originations and realization are often weighed differently in a so-called comparable firm. As a result, two lawyers who have highly similar numbers may be paid differently in another firm, depending on how those numbers are ranked in importance in that other firm's compensation system.

Moreover, there are firms that fly well under the radar, as some have chosen not to report their financials, while others fall outside the ambit of the legal media due to their smaller size. It may be eye-opening for some to discover just how well they might do in some of those firms, which further underscores why the compensation dispersion range is much broader than even some of the most seasoned attorneys and legal observers realize.

• A firm's financial standing is not truly apparent to outside observers.

 Many law firms, particularly in the Am Law 100, have reported their financials for more than three decades. This is a unique twist, as you rarely see this in other industries populated by privately held companies, and it does provide a glimpse into how firms are performing.

The data make it clear that Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz and a handful of other firms have really separated themselves, at least with respect to profitability. The numbers also support the view that the market has segregated into tiers, where firms are bunched with competitors that have similar performance metrics. The upshot is the perception that all firms are alike, or at least very close, especially in their particular grouping.

Once again, the reality, which is not readily apparent to outsiders, may be far different, as firms with similar, and sometimes stunning, performance metrics, actually may differ greatly if one were to gain access to some other critical information. For example, if one looked at the publicly available financial metrics of former bellwether firms, such as Brobeck, Phleger & Harrison; Dewey & LeBoeuf and Howrey, to name a few, in the years before they ceased operating, you would have seen some highly impressive numbers that would not have led anyone to predict what later unfolded. What gives?

Well, there are other pieces of information that better tell the story of just how financially strong a firm may be. While profits per equity partner grab the headlines, you will learn a lot more reviewing a firm's balance sheet, along with its financial and income statements. While leverage and profit margin statistics are interesting, it would be far more enlightening to know how deep a firm typically goes into its line (and when it gets out), how much long-term debt it is carrying, and whether a firm retains some of its profits or earnings so that it is better positioned to make investments in the future.

This information isn't reported and is much more indicative of whether perceived competitive firms are really “all alike.”

In summation, a law firm is a professional services organization. Unlike companies that crank out widgets that drive their revenue, law firms are comprised of people, with all their attendant, and variable, strengths and weaknesses. One astute former managing partner whom I greatly respected, used to always say that a law firm's assets walked into elevators and out the door at the end of the day and he could only hope that they would return tomorrow.

As such, it is overly simplistic, and frequently dead wrong, to assume that all firms are alike, which includes those that one thinks are in their peer group. While the fundamental aspects of practice may be highly similar, the factors discussed here, along with many others, reveal that  more holistic assessments of firms show that many are markedly different in areas where it really counts.

Frank Michael D'Amore is the founder of Attorney Career Catalysts, http://www.attycareers.com, a Pennsylvania-based legal recruiting and consulting firm that focuses on law firm mergers and partner placements.  He is a former partner in an AmLaw 200 firm, general counsel in privately held and publicly traded companies, and vice president of business development. He can be reached at [email protected].