Peer to Peer Magazine

30 T here is a lot that is packed into the Am Law 100 and Second Hundred releases. Two issues of The American Lawyer are dedicated to slicing and dicing the performance of the Am Law firms, defined as the top 200 U.S. law firms by revenue. Then there is the data. The Am Law 200 dataset, which is housed in ALM's Legal Compass tool, includes over 5,000 data points on just those firms alone. Given that all this information is released within a six-week time frame, students of the business of law could be excused for feeling a bit overwhelmed. It's a lot to take in. To help make sense of this year's Am Law 200 release, ALM's editorial and intelligence teams partnered up to identify the five key takeaways from this year's Am Law 200. These takeaways should help law firms leaders begin making sense of the current state of the legal industry and also help them understand where things are heading over the near term. Big law had a good (post- downturn) year The first thing to note about Big Law's performance in the past fiscal year, is that law firms did exceedingly well by recent standards. The Am Law 200, as a group, grew their revenue by 7.3% 1 . This performance is impressive. Law firm growth outpaced the broader U.S. economy by more than two times. Firms also outpaced the revenue growth of the S&P 500. Importantly, this year's growth was significantly faster than the previous year, when the Am Law 200 grew their revenue by 4.5%. This improvement in growth rates was fairly broad based. Fifty-seven percent of firms grew faster this year than last. The Am Law 200's strong performance was not solely in top line revenue growth. In head count terms, the group grew lawyers by an average of 3.1% last year. This figure, which was buoyed by strong demand growth and a series of mid-size mergers, is more than double last year's growth rate of 1.4% Five Key Takeaways From the 2019 Am Law 200 B Y N I C H O L A S B R U C H A N D G I N A P A S S A R E L L A At first glance the Am Law data suggests big law had a great year, but there is more to the story.

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