Two years ago in these pages, in an effort to parse The Am Law 100 for clues about what was really going on, we labeled 20 firms Super Rich because they met a very high bar: revenue per lawyer of at least $1 million and profits per partner of at least $2 million.
One piece of news among this year’s Am Law 100 is that the exclusive club of yesterday is more like the YMCA today: Twenty-eight firms now share that (still enviable) profile. Raise the level slightly, and a sizable group still remains; this suggests that The Am Law 100 continues to striate, with the gap increasing between the top and bottom firms. (But we don’t want to get carried away. Becoming too exclusive—$1.5 million RPL and $2.5 million PPP, say—leaves just three firms in the pool: Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, Sullivan & Cromwell and Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz.)
