Bringing up the rear of The Am Law 100 in recent years, Cozen O’Connor would seem an unlikely leader on a key firm metric, but it is: This is a firm associates love. Cozen ranked third of 126 firms on The American Lawyer’s Midlevel Associates Survey in 2011, and that score was no fluke, as it ranked ninth of 137 firms the year before. What’s Cozen’s secret? Probably not its office in West Conshohocken, Pennsylvania (to be fair, the Philadelphia–based firm also has offices in cities that don’t torment spellcheckers, like New York, Chicago, and London).

Numbering more than 500 lawyers, Cozen—which was founded in 1970—is a full–service firm, with a practice that includes antitrust, commercial litigation, immigration, labor and employment, health, corporate, and capital markets. Insurance and recovery work has been a longtime strength, and intellectual property has been an area of growth (the firm brought on 19 lateral IP lawyers in New York in 2011). Indeed, Cozen has been expanding not only its practice areas but its footprint in recent years, adding offices in Chicago (2000), Washington, D.C. (2001), Toronto (2005), and Miami (2006). In Manhattan the firm has even doubled down its bet—literally—by operating two offices, one downtown and one in midtown.

While Cozen’s revenue can fluctuate a bit—not so much due to the recession but to contingency fees—the firm has consistently ranked well outside The Am Law 100 on revenue per lawyer and profits per partner, with both figures coming in far closer to $500,000 than the magic $1 million mark. The firm ranks in the Second Hundred, too, on pro bono work, placing 117th of 200 firms on The American Lawyer’s 2011 tally, with Cozen lawyers averaging less than 30 hours of pro bono work for the year.

—Updated as of 1/1/12