In 1985, George Michael’s “Careless Whisper” topped the charts, Pete Rose became Major League Baseball’s all-time hits leader, Microsoft Corp. released its first edition of Windows and Mikhail Gorbachev became the leader of the Soviet Union.

The American Lawyer and its founder and editor in chief Steven Brill, as recounted in this space a few years ago, also made the fateful decision to rank the nation’s top law firms by profitability.