Firm Profiles

Milbank’s Am Law 100 ranking—forty–first on the 2011 list, with $622 million in revenue—doesn’t tell the full story. The firm typically scores in the top 15 on key metrics like profits per partner (a healthy $2.5 million in 2010), revenue per lawyer, and average partner compensation. The New York based firm (it has 11 offices in all, including eight outside the United States) also earned an impressive seventh place spot on The American Lawyer’s 2011 A–List, which looks at a range of nonfinancial metrics (diversity, pro bono, and associate satisfaction scores), in addition to revenue, to zero in on the nation’s most elite law firms.

Of course Milbank—which has 574 lawyers, including 119 equity partners—has been around long enough to perfect its game. The firm dates back to 1866, and made its mark representing the railroads, banks, and oil companies that helped shape the nation. Later on, Milbank built expertise in bankruptcy and restructuring, financial services, and securities litigation (it represented creditors in the Enron Corporation, WorldCom, and Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. bankruptcies). And the firm’s project finance lawyers (who number more than 100) are among the world’s busiest: Between 2008 and 2011, Milbank closed more than 140 project financings, which raised more than $85 billion for energy and other infrastructure projects across the globe.

Much like other transactional–heavy firms, Milbank took a hit during the economic crisis. It placed fifty–ninth of 84 firms on The American Lawyer’s Recession Performance Index, and the firm laid off dozens of associates and staff. But morale among junior lawyers began rebounding in 2011, when the firm ranked sixty–eighth of 126 firms on the magazine’s Midlevel Associates Survey—an improvement from its ninety–third place finish (of 137 firms) in 2010. And challenging times or not, Milbank has maintained top rankings in diversity (thirteenth of 194 firms in 2011, with minorities comprising nearly a quarter of the firm’s U.S. lawyers) and pro bono work (sixth of 200 firms in 2011, with attorneys averaging just over 125 annual hours). An innovative fellowship program lets first– and fourth–year associates work for three months, at full pay, at the pro bono legal services provider of their choice. So far, the program has generated more than half a million hours of work. That’s something of which name partner Harrison Tweed, who served as president of the Legal Aid Society of New York, would be proud of.

—Updated as of 1/1/12