2016 Vault Law Firm Rankings: Self-Perpetuating Prestige

There's surprisingly little change in this year's list, but it's still always interesting to see who's rising and who's falling.

What is the basis for law firm prestige? Is it the quality of the firm’s work product? Is it the pedigree of the firm’s lawyers? Is it the financial success of the firm, measured in terms of gross revenues and profits per partner?

Prestige flows from all of these things. But perhaps most of all, prestige arises out of… prestige.

Today our friends at Vault released their closely watched Vault 100 rankings, which rank the nation’s major law firms by prestige. And this approach to ranking firms makes sense: if Wall Street is all about money and Hollywood is all about fame, Biglaw is all about prestige. The Vault rankings exert influence over law students choosing between potential summer employers and experienced lawyers contemplating lateral moves.

We look forward to the Vault rankings every year; the movements of firms up and down the list can give insight into which firms are thriving and which firms are diving. Alas, the latest Vault rankings are less dramatic than usual. Check out the top 15:

1. Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz (no change)
2. Cravath, Swaine & Moore (no change)
3. Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom (no change)
4. Sullivan & Cromwell (no change)
5. Davis Polk & Wardwell (no change)
6. Simpson Thacher & Bartlett (no change)
7. Kirkland & Ellis (+2)
8. Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton (-1)
9. Weil, Gotshal & Manges (-1)
10. Latham & Watkins (no change)
11. Gibson Dunn & Crutcher (no change)
12. Boies, Schiller & Flexner (+1)
13. Covington & Burling (-1)
14. Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison (no change)
15. Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan (no change)

That was pretty much a cut-and-paste job from last year’s rankings. Wachtell Lipton kept its crown for the 13th year in a row — a nice achievement for the firm to celebrate in its 50th anniversary year — and Cravath followed closely behind.

In the top 15 firms, only five showed any movement, and those moves were tiny. Kirkland moved up a little, maybe thanks to those nice bonuses. Cleary and Weil dropped a little (Weil’s unfortunate April Fools’ Day joke probably didn’t help). Boies and Covington traded places, perhaps because of Boies’s huge bonuses and Covington’s hugely disappointing (and tardy) ones.

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Expanding to the top 30, the first page of rankings as they appear on the Vault website, doesn’t unearth much more movement. Among the top 30 firms, only 12 moved at all from last year, and the biggest move was three spots upward (for Munger Tolles & Olson — a deserved move in my view, given MTO’s elite hiring standards and its status as a feeder firm to the federal judiciary).

Things got a little more interesting outside the top 30, as highlighted in Vault’s own write-up of the new rankings:

Vault’s Law 100 Rankings for 2016 are here, and it’s clear which firms have a good thing going. Cooley is now a Top 40 Vault firm after joining the Top 50 for the first time last year….

Cooley’s ascension continues this year with a seven-point jump to the No. 38 spot. Last year it climbed 10 spots, more than any other firm in the 2015 rankings, to land in the Top 50 for the first time. Attorneys at peer firms had no shortage of great things to say about this 850-lawyer firm, describing it as a “top firm for startups” that is “great at IP” and “gets all the deals.” Fenwick & West, another Bay Area player, climbed six spots to snatch the No. 75 slot from McGuireWoods. Fenwick attorneys are known as “the cool kids in Silicon Valley,” who are “entrepreneurial” and worked on the “Facebook IPO” in 2012.

Here are a few other winners besides Cooley and Fenwick:

  • Morgan Lewis: doing well by doing good, MLB climbed six spots to #44 after rescuing Bingham.
  • Norton Rose Fulbright: posting the largest gain of this year, Norton Rose moved up 15 spots to #72.
  • Dentons: the world’s biggest law firm, angry about the Am Law 100 rankings, should be much happier with Vault — Dentons rose nine places, from #89 to #80.
  • Pepper Hamilton: the firm posted a nice gain, going from #97 to #90.
  • Manatt, Phelps & Phillips: up five places, from #96 to #91.
  • Patterson Belknap: the firm traded the #100 spot for #95.

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And who took a hit in the latest Vault rankings? Squire Patton Boggs, created when Squire Sanders saved Patton Boggs, wound up at #82 — lower than Patton Boggs’s former #71 ranking, but the Patton Boggs lawyers are probably just happy to have jobs. Stroock got stricken from the Vault 100. The other firm to fall out of the rankings shouldn’t shock anyone: Kasowitz Benson, which has been cutting headcount while peer firms have been cutting big bonus checks.

Congrats to all the law firms that either maintained or improved their standings in the Vault 100 rankings. An individual lawyer’s reputation can be ruined in an instant (just peruse the pages of Above the Law), but law firm prestige, earned through excellence over many years, takes much longer to erode.

Vault Law 100 [Vault]
Announcing Vault’s Top 100 Law Firms [Vault]

Earlier: 2015 Vault Law Firm Rankings: The Nation’s 100 Most Prestigious Law Firms
2014 Vault Law Firm Rankings: Which Firm Is The Most Prestigious In The Land?