As individuals, we may be trying to “think global, act local”—I, myself, am savoring the last of this summer’s locally grown tomatoes—but it seems to me that Big Law’s mandate is exactly the opposite: Think local, act global. That is, have a deep, personal understanding of your clients, and be able to solve their problems the world over. This issue of The American Lawyer measures your relative success at that job.
There’s encouraging news. This year’s Global 100, the highest-grossing firms in the world, saw top-line revenue increase 4.5 percent, the second year of similar solid growth. Average revenue per lawyer and profits per equity partner among this group were up 5.4 percent and 5.5 percent, respectively. In part, those boosts were aided by a slight decline in head count, the first drop in years. (And while RPL and PPP are on the rebound, they haven’t quite topped levels of the prerecession boom.)
