Firm Profiles

Greenberg Traurig is a big, iconoclastic firm. One of a dozen or so firms with more than $1 billion in annual revenues—it may have gotten its start in Miami, but it now counts New York as its largest office. It has a lot of other locations too, ranging from smaller American cities like Albany, to burgeoning global hot spots like Shanghai, to largely untapped (at least by most U.S. firms) markets like Tel Aviv.

Its passion for lateral hiring has helped Greenberg fill out its attorney roster. In a typical year, Greenberg will pick up dozens of partners from rival firms. Many lawyers are drawn by the firm’s entrepreneurial bent: Partners are given a lot of leeway to manage their practices as they see fit, and even Greenberg’s offices tend to enjoy an unusual amount of independence (there are more than 30 offices in all). The firm also fares well on diversity. With minorities composing roughly 14 percent of its U.S.–based lawyers, and 10 percent of its partnership, Greenberg ranked well above average on The American Lawyer’s 2011 Diversity Scorecard, coming in fifty–second of 194 firms.

Still, Greenberg, whose clients come from industries including information technology, energy, entertainment, telecommunications, and health care, isn’t one of the hyper–profitable shops among The Am Law 100. Although it has ranked around the top ten on gross revenues, when it comes to profits per partner, Greenberg has placed more around the top 50. But unlike many of its peers, Greenberg’s revenues stayed fairly stable during the recession, seesawing a bit but avoiding any heart–stopping drops. For a firm that likes to pitch itself not only to prospective clients but to prospective partners, that was a very good thing, indeed.

—Updated as of 1/1/12