Lower cost structures helped propel two firms onto The Am Law 100 for the first time: Lewis Brisbois Bisgaard & Smith, which has grown from a six-lawyer insurance defense shop in Los Angeles in 1979 to an 804-lawyer national practice, and Indianapolis’s Barnes & Thornburg, a 469-lawyer firm that has been snapping up big-firm litigators (and corporate partners) who don’t want big-firm billing rates.
“We were growing at a time when other law firms weren’t,” says Barnes & Thornburg managing partner Alan Levin, whose firm has launched five offices since 2009, including one in Los Angeles in 2011.
