Legal media companies are addicted to rankings.
Such is the pull – both in eyeballs and dollars – of rankings that every legal title and website at some point decides to put out their own list, survey, or ranking.
Therefore, it was inevitable that Above The Law, one of the biggest legal media properties in the market, would dive in with its own proprietary list.
Above The Law has dabbled with this sort of thing before, but this week made a splash with the release of its new ATL Power 100 Law Firm Rankings.
With a whiff of the longstanding Vault prestige list, Above The Law says that “the ATL Power Firms are the ones that move the market. These are the firms that set the pace on lawyer pay and compete for the wealthiest clients. These are the market leaders.”
When it comes to these sort of lists, I’m never sure how much people care about the methodology rather than the result itself, but The Power 100 is based on objective data points such as headcount and partner promotions along with subjective feedback from over 20,000 lawyers.
The publishers say that the new list is “meant to offer a new perspective on some of the most prestigious and wealthy firms by using a new rubric to show how they stack up against the competition.”
Each firm is awarded points, based on these different criteria, with 100 being the perfect score.
The rankings themselves showcase the usual suspects – the largest, most prestigious US private practice law firms.
So while not surprising in a broad sense, there’s one or two notable standouts, such as Kirkland & Ellis appearing at #2 – ahead of a number of the Wall Street-headquartered firms you might normally expect to see in that spot.
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