Firm Profiles

Dorsey & Whitney’s alumni roster reads like a veritable Who’s Who of Minnesota royalty. Former vice president Walter Mondale, U.S. Supreme Court justice Harry Blackmun, and noted law professor William Prosser have all hung their diploma on Dorsey’s wall at some point in time. Sure, it’s easy to poke fun at a firm based in Minneapolis, but Dorsey’s lawyers have gotten the last laugh: The firm regularly scores in the upper reaches of The American Lawyer’s Midlevel Associates Survey, coming in tenth in 2010 and twentieth in 2011.

And Dorsey’s footprint actually extends far beyond its home state. It has offices throughout the United States, as well as in Europe and the Asia–Pacific region, and—perhaps not a surprise given the location of its headquarters—has a presence in Canada as well. In The Great White North, lawyers handle Canadian cross–border capital markets and M&A transactions among other matters. The firm as a whole is well–known for its M&A work, with other areas of focus including intellectual property, labor and employment, litigation, tax, and trusts and estates.

More than a century old, Dorsey has never been a leader on revenue per lawyer or profits per partner: Both fall well outside the top 100 firms. And the firm took a hit during the global economic crisis, coming in fifty–seventh of 84 firms on The American Lawyer’s Recession Performance Index and seeing revenue drops in 2009 and 2010 before stabilizing in 2011.

While Dorsey trails the pack, too, on diversity—it ranked 128th of 194 firms on our 2011 Diversity Scorecard, with minorities comprising just 8 percent of the U.S. attorney ranks—it earns good marks on pro bono, coming in forty–fourth of 200 firms on the magazine’s 2011 survey. (Dorsey lawyers averaged nearly 70 hours a year of nonpaying work). Projects have included assistance on housing, civil rights, children’s immigration, and international human rights issues.

—Updated as of 1/1/12