Firm Profiles

Hughes Hubbard manages to stand at both ends of The Am Law 100. By gross revenue alone, it typically ranks near the bottom of the list. But change the focus to revenue per lawyer and noneconomic measures like diversity, pro bono work, and associate satisfaction—the factors The American Lawyer considers when compiling its annual “A–List” of firms—and Hughes Hubbard jumps to the head of the line. Indeed, after years of steadily climbing up the ranks of our A–List, it hit the number one spot in 2011.

Founded in 1888 in New York, Hughes Hubbard has eschewed the “grow big, grow fast, grow wide” strategy of many of its peers. It hasn’t gone crazy adding laterals and partners, there haven’t been any blockbuster mergers, and it hasn’t opened a bunch of new offices in exotic locations. The last two offices Hughes Hubbard opened—nine years apart from each other—were in Kansas City and Jersey City.

When Hughes Hubbard expands, it is often done via small lateral acquisitions. In recent years the firm has used this strategy to bulk up its restructuring and bankruptcy practices. The Kansas City office came together after Hughes Hubbard added a team of product liability lawyers—and their tobacco–heavy caseload—from Shook, Hardy & Bacon.

While the firm’s practice runs the gamut—from traditional areas like mergers and acquisitions, real estate, antitrust, and intellectual property, to niches like art law—litigation is a particular strength. Hughes Hubbard earned an honorable mention in The American Lawyer’s 2012 Litigation Department of the Year competition, based largely on successes for Merck & Co., Inc, in the company’s Vioxx personal injury litigation, and a multibillion–dollar recovery for the trustee for the Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. liquidation.

As if there wasn’t already enough work to go around, Hughes Hubbard lawyers put in an unusually high number of hours on pro bono matters. On The American Lawyer’s 2011 Pro Bono Report—in which Hughes Hubbard ranked second of 200 firms—lawyers averaged more than 140 hours a year. Evidently that’s just fine with the firm’s junior lawyers, whose scores placed Hughes Hubbard tenth (of 127 firms) on our 2011 Midlevel Associates Survey. Attorneys who manage to fill the firm’s coffers, do good deeds, and are happy to boot?

Hughes Hubbard knows that such mythical creatures actually exist.

—Updated as of 1/1/12