The Am Law Daily reported last October on the Am Law 200 firms that saw the largest fluctuations in head count over the past year. On the heels of The American Lawyer’s recent Lateral Report, as well as the completion of several mergers and other mass attorney exoduses of note, we decided to pick up where we left off, crunching the Am Law 200 head count numbers from Oct. 1, 2014, through March 8 based on data compiled through ALM’s RivalEdge.
Below are the top six risers and fallers in head count by percentage change in the total numbers of lawyers on a given firm’s payroll. Economies of scale are an important factor—firms of smaller size are more likely to experience large percentage changes than global legal giants. Mergers, of course, also factor heavily into the head count calculus.