If there’s anything we love here at Legal Pad, it’s Haagen Dazs dark chocolate ice cream bars. Twenty-one grams of fat and worth every last one. However, we don’t get those here at LP HQ. We get free coffee and 2008 results for AmLaw 100 firms, and so we pass the latter along to you.
Bingham McCutchen, Boston-based but with a creamy San Francisco center, reports revenue and profits rose despite the bitter-dark shell that coated 2008. Gross revenue of $767 million represented a 3.2 percent increase over 2007, while profits per partner went up 6.4 percent to $1.42 million. The AmLaw Daily talks to Bingham big wig Jay Zimmerman here, and notes that dropping headcount helped the firm see a rise of nearly 6 percent in revenue per lawyer.
WilmerHale, Reed Smith, and utterly random sugar cravings, after the jump:
Also putting a sweet frosting on a sour year, Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr said revenue and PPP rose in 2008, though by less than 2 percent in both cases. Kinda goes with the “Flat is the New Up” styling we put on our early San Francisco results story a couple weeks back. More on Wilmer at AmLaw Daily.
Finally, those busy little beavers at AmLaw Daily (makin’ us look lazy out here, people) give us the scoop (more dessert puns! We can do this all night!) on Pittsburgh giant Reed Smith:
Reed Smith preliminarily reports a 10 percent increase in gross revenue to $980 million in 2008, on the back of significant lateral expansion. But economic headwinds knocked profits per equity partner down to $935,000, 6.5 percent below the $1 million milestone reached in 2007, roughly back to the level recorded in 2006. Revenue per lawyer fell a comparatively modest 3.5 percent, to $660,000.
It’s like someone threw a recession but forgot to invite the law firms. Well, lots of associates and staff got little pink invitations, but no one seems to have brought the party to the top yet.(Speaking of which, Legal Times has Arent Fox's results under this headline: Arent Fox to Freeze Associate Salaries on Heels of Double-Digit Growth. Ouch.)
All this work is in service of determining this year’s AmLaw 100 (and the Cal Law 25, of course). The American Lawyer has your ongoing buffet of tasty 2008 results here, and we are gathering our nutritious yet delicious Cal Law pieces on the California results here.
Having brought you this information, Legal Pad will now break for snack foods. Enjoy.
— Brian McDonough
That's "Jay Zimmerman", not "Barry Zimmerman" from Bingham McCutchen...
Posted by: ervin | January 22, 2009 at 07:52 PM
Yeah, my ridiculously rookie mistake. Apologies to Bingham, and a promise to develop a mnemonic device for keeping this straight that involves associating the firm with Jay-Z.
Posted by: Brian McDonough | January 23, 2009 at 02:09 PM
What should we do with this recession ?
Posted by: generic viagra | March 15, 2010 at 06:30 AM