Firm Profiles

While this Philadelphia–based firm goes a long way back—to 1849, to be precise—it is a relatively new entrant on The Am Law 100, making its first appearance in 2003. Fueling the firm’s growth is a series of mergers in recent years. The most significant of these was the firm’s 2007 union with Chicago’s Gardner Carton & Douglas, which gave Drinker a stronger presence in the Midwest (it now has 11 offices in the region) and added expertise in health law, employee benefits and executive compensation, hedge funds, and government and regulatory affairs, among other areas.

By some key metrics, however, Drinker, which numbers some 600 lawyers, still ranks well outside the top 100 firms. Diversity (150th place on The American Lawyer’s 2011 ranking), pro bono work (112th of 200 firms in 2011), and associate satisfaction (115th of 126 firms on our 2011 Midlevel Associates Survey) are areas ripe for improvement.

Still, there is one place where Drinker has stood out from the crowd. While other firms were deferring first–year associate start dates during the economic downturn, Drinker came up with an innovative training program, in which associates would start in the fall, as always, but spend their first months largely in a classroom setting learning the ropes from partners and other instructors. They wouldn’t be expected to bill work during that time, and in effect, the cost of training was passed from clients to the firm (no small thing for either party during a recession). The program was such a hit that Drinker continues it to this day.

Drinker has a sizable presence in the nation’s capital—with 97 lawyers, it was the forty–eighth largest D.C. office in 2011. But it is the New York office that has the most compelling—and heart–stopping—back story. It was based on the eighty–ninth floor of One World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. After a tense 14 hours, all lawyers and staff were accounted for and safe.

—Updated as of 1/1/12