This winter, The American Lawyer was nominated for six Neal Awards from American Business Media. Half of those awards were for our coverage in print and online of Dewey & LeBoeuf’s painful end. The awards are an opportunity for us to reflect on both a satisfying and challenging chapter in our newsroom. The Dewey breaking news coverage last spring, captained by executive editor Ed Shanahan, was comprehensive and authoritative. At one point, almost every reporter in the newsroom was involved. Charts, like the Dewey Departure Tracker, also monitored departures and new homes for partners in real time. Our Neal-nominated feature story, " House of Cards," (July/August 2012), also exemplified the type of story we do best. This profile chronicled the firm’s rise and fall and was reported by Sara Randazzo, Brian Baxter, and Julie Triedman, who also wrote the piece.
The challenging chapter took place before the Dewey departures turned into a flood. In early 2012, firm management told us that in 2011 Dewey had gross revenues of $935 million and profits per partner of $1.8 million. (As a rule, we never disclose our sources, but given the concerns over the numbers’ veracity we made an exception.) Within weeks of our story, however, Dewey partners described dramatically lower results to other media outlets. We were surprised that the numbers we had published online, as part of our routine Am Law financial coverage, varied so much from these other reports. (Dewey management attributed the discrepancy to "methodological differences" between the firm and The American Lawyer.) And, with Dewey a rare exception, we have historically found that the financials we report track firms’ audited numbers.
