America’s Largest Law Firms Keep Getting Larger

law-firm-12086-largeEven with a seemingly endless stream of stories in the lawyer press about lay-offs at large corporate firms, the largest law firms in the United States continue to grow larger and larger.

In the National Law Journal’s recently released list of the 350 largest law firms in the United States, two Chicago-based law firms have broken through the 4000 lawyer barrier. DLA Piper leads the list with 4036 lawyers while Baker and McKenzie is close behind at 4004.

There is a considerable gap between these two firms and the next largest firm, although three law firms–Jones Day (New York), Hogan Lovells (Washington, D.C.), and Latham & Watkins–each have more than 2000 attorneys. An additional 17 firms had more than 1000.

In spite of the leap upward by DLA Piper and Baker and McKenzie, the overall growth of the top 350 was quite sluggish with only a 1.1% increase in total size since 2011. (The 2013 ranking are based on 2012 employment numbers.) Nine of the 21 largest firms are actually smaller now than a year ago and a 10th firm is exactly the same size. DLA Piper, in contrast, grew by 7.7% as it added 290 additional lawyers. However, much of its growth game through the acquisition of other law firms including firms in France and Australia.

Six Milwaukee firms made the list of 350. The top five combined declined by a single lawyer over the last year. The six are, with their national ranking:

31. Foley and Lardner (872 lawyers, down 2 from the previous year)

107. Quarles & Brady (413, same as the previous year)

202. Reinhart Boerner Van Deuren (203, up 1 lawyer)

207. Michael Best & Friedrich (198, up 2 lawyers)

233. Godfrey & Kahn (170, down 2 lawyers)

309. (5-way tie) Whyte Hirshboeck Dudek (130 lawyers, new to the list)

Even when the economy is sluggish, the dramatic growth in the size of corporate law firms, especially the largest firms, relentlessly continues. This phenomenon has been one of the most significant developments in the legal profession over the past four decades.

When I was in law school in the fall of 1976, I had an interview with the Nashville firm of Bass, Berry, and Sims. At the time, it was the largest law firm in the city of Nashville with a grand total of 17 lawyers. Today, the firm is still the largest law firm in Nashville, but it now has more than 200 lawyers (even though it did not choose to offer one of those positions to me).

I also remember, sometime around 1980, how amazed observers of the legal profession were that the Houston law firm of Fulbright & Jaworski (now Norton Rose Fulbright) had passed the 400 lawyer mark, something that had been unthinkable only a decade or two earlier. Now Piper has passed the 4000 lawyer mark.

Where this ends, nobody seems to know, but can the 10,000 lawyer firm be that far away? Of course, when this happens it will more likely be the result of a series of mergers rather than through entry level hiring.

 

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New ABA Statistics Show that the Growth Rate of the Wisconsin Bar in the Last Ten Years Has Been Below Average

According to new statistics posted on the American Bar Association website, the number of lawyers in Wisconsin grew from 13,813 in 2003 to 15,538 in 2013, an increase of 12%. For the country as a whole, the number of lawyers increased from 1.06 million in 2003 to 1.27 million a decade later, an increase of 20%.

The only year in which the number of lawyers in Wisconsin actually decreased was from 2007 to 2008, when the total fell by 113 lawyers, from 14,561 to 14,448.

The states with the largest percentage growth in the number of lawyers over the past ten years are:

Nevada +54%
Alabama +47%
Utah +36%
Arizona +42
Delaware +36%

In two states, the number of lawyers has actually declined since 2003: the Rhode Island total has dropped by 19% (from 5,135 to 4,173), while that for Massachusetts has fallen by 8%. Massachusetts actually hit its decade low total in 2007, while the bottom was reached in Rhode Island in 2009. In both states the total has increased in recent years.

The three states with the most slowly growing bars are Vermont +3%, Nebraska +4%, and Alaska +8%.

The largest total number of lawyers is in New York (166,317), followed by California (163,163), Texas (82,607), and Illinois (62,496). The smallest number is in North Dakota (1,560), followed by Wyoming (1,681), and South Dakota (1,905).

 

 

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Civility in the Courtroom

It seems like the more of a digital society we become, the less of a civil one we are. People are on their devices constantly — while wandering the grocery store, in the middle of a movie at a theater, during dinners. How many times have you seen a group of people out and noticed that all of them are on their phones? While the source of the problem is debatable (maybe phones and tables aren’t to blame), there can be no dispute that rudeness and incivility is on the rise.  It is front and center in the national political discourse, and of course, Wisconsinites need only look as far as the Supreme Court or the Milwaukee County Sheriff to see first-hand examples.

But when I think about civility in the practice of law, it’s not the lawyers who are the problem; it’s the judiciary. I have never had opposing counsel question whether I was being candid, refer to me as intellectually dishonest, or tower over me and yell at me in the middle of hearing. All of those things have happened to me at the hands of members of the court. And how to deal with that is not something anyone ever teaches you in law school.

Judges do not have it easy. They have exploding caseloads and fewer and fewer dollars every year to deal with them. But at what point did the convenience of the court’s calendar start not just to overshadow the rights of the defendants and the needs of the victims and witnesses, but to completely consume it? Doing anything to disrupt the court’s calendar — whether it be by filing a motion requesting an evidentiary hearing, seeking an adjournment, or (gasp!) a defendant who actually exercises his right to a trial — causes a meltdown.

Recently, while waiting for my case to be called, I watched a judge grill a defendant at his final pretrial hearing about why he wanted a trial. “What is it you think your lawyer can do for you?” the judge asked, reminding the defendant that he had already confessed. But how does the judge know that? Because the state alleged it when the parties were discussing witnesses? There are lots of reasons people confess, if that is in fact what he did. And so what if he did confess; maybe his defense wasn’t that he didn’t do it, but that he was privileged to act in a particular way. I have no idea — I just saw a five-minute final pretrial hearing. But I was outraged that the defense attorney stood silent and let his client be questioned. The answer to the judge’s question is simple: the client wants a trial so he gets a trial. Why should never figure into it.

That sort of questioning has no place in a courtroom. It’s abhorrent. It’s unconstitutional. It’s uncivil.

Judges are under enormous pressure, but so is everyone else. A defendant exercising his rights by actively defending against the serious charges against him, should not be the cause of incivility. It should be celebrated.

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