NLJ top 250 firms drop 4% in lawyer headcount

This article says that "the number of attorneys in 2009 [in the top 250 firms] sank to 126,669 lawyers, compared with 131,928 attorneys last year."  In 2008, the number of attorneys increased by 4.3 percent" and the number of associates dropped by 8.7%  

If the worst year in decades was a 4% drop, is some of the rhetoric about the death of biglaw overblown?  I agree, though, that the way biglaw goes about its business has changed.

(Just as a point of comparison, if all 250 firms were combined, the number of lawyers would be half the number of employees at Nestle, the world's 36th largest company.)

Comments

[Andrew Perlman]

John,

Two quick points. To compare Nestle and the law firms, you'd have to tally the number of all employees at each law firm, not just the number of lawyers. If you did that, law firms wouldn't look quite so puny.

That said, your point is well-taken. Law firms are relatively small given the size of many companies in the corporate world. My hunch is that this will be much less true in 20 years. Law firms have grown exponentially in the last 20 years, and they will grow even faster in the years to come (despite the recent down tick) once various barriers are lifted (most notably, restrictions on MDP).

One other random thought. Given the size of the American legal profession, I think we can say that roughly 10% of all lawyers work in one of the law firms in the top 250. I don't know if that strikes people as a lot or a little, but it's an interesting stat that I often mention to my students, who often have large firms on the brain.

[john steele]

Andy,

Yes, thanks for those comments, with which I agree. In my experience, at larger firms the number of employees is roughly the same as the number of lawyers. So if we combine all 250 firms, we'd have the same number of Nestle. I'm just offering this as an order of magnitude comparison, because sometimes when I'm discussing the trends in biglaw I wonder if everyone knows the basic numbers. For example, I sometimes ask my students, "if you were barred from ever being a partner in any of the top 250 firms, how much of the profession would still be open to you?" It is the rare student who gives an accurate answer.

It will be interesting to see if MDP or the revisions to 1.10(a) drive more growth. From my experience, the changes to 1.10(a) could lead to a lot of consolidation at the high end.