By the numbers, Joseph Tate may be the luckiest lateral of the past 25 years. When Tate moved to Dechert from Schnader Harrison Segal & Lewis in 1991, he was moving from one top-five Philadelphia firm to another. As it turned out, he was also moving from the firm that dropped the most ranks by size in the past quarter-century to the one that gained the most ranks in profits per partner, among firms on the original Am Law 100 list (for fiscal 1986).
Since 1986, Schnader has been overtaken by 173 law firms, as it fell to 246th by attorney head count, placing it at the cusp of falling off The National Law Journal ‘s NLJ 250. Meanwhile, Dechert leapfrogged 52 firms, as it grew its profits per partner (PPP) nearly tenfold, from $220,000 in 1986 to $2.11 million in 2011. “I would never have imagined the growth that we’ve had,” Tate says.
