Which Biglaw Firms Promote The Most (And Least) To Partnership?

Even for those fortunate enough to land a Biglaw associate job in this market, the prospect of eventual promotion to partnership is exceedingly slim.

Even for those fortunate enough to land a Biglaw associate job in this market, the prospect of eventual promotion to partnership is exceedingly slim. (Cynics might recall Fran Leibowitz’s line about the lottery: “I figure you have the same chance of winning whether you play or not.”) Diminution of genuine promotional opportunities can be attributable to, among other things, the ascendance of profits per partner as the metric for law firm “success.” The PPP obsession has made partnership less attainable, as firms decrease their percentage of equity partners, lengthen the partnership track, create tiered “partnerships,” and add more of counsel positions.

Nevertheless, the dream of Biglaw partnership is alive and well. To our ongoing survey in connection with the upcoming ATL Law Firm Rankings we added a new question: “Do you see yourself becoming a partner at your current firm?” We are relatively early in the survey process (about 1,000 responses thus far), but we were quite surprised to see that a majority of associates are telling us “yes.” The positive percentages increase based on length of tenure, with new associates least optimistic and senior associates the most, but apparently expectations for advancement are higher than the actual outcomes would warrant. In any event, it would seem relative promotional opportunities ought to be an important consideration for law students in evaluating and comparing potential law firm employers. ATL has been working with a new legal startup — NavForward — to address what has been an absence of information on this point. Looking at the available data, we find that there is a lot of diversity in promotional practices in what is often portrayed as a generally bleak market for career advancement.

NavForward’s data from the 2014-2015 promotion season shows vast discrepancies in promotion potential between firms. At the higher end of the spectrum, associates have as high as a 16% chance of promotion to partner, while at other firms associates have as little as a 1% (or worse) shot. Here are the top and bottom 10 Am Law 200 firms:

Top 10 Firms

Firm % Promoted
Honigman Miller 16
LeClairRyan 15
Kutak Rock 13
Quarles & Brady 9
Moore & Van Allen 8
Fox Rothschild 8
Akerman 8
Carlton Fields 8
Kirkland & Ellis 8
Ice Miller 8

Bottom 10 Firms

Firm % Promoted
Chadbourne & Parke 1
Hughes Hubbard 1
Skadden 1
Lane Powell 1
Paul Weiss 1
Cravath 1
Cleary Gottlieb 1
Paul Hastings 1
Schulte Roth <1%
Irell & Manella <1%

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The above numbers represent the percentage of all non-partners (regardless of class year) who made partner in the most recent promotion cycle. So, what do all these numbers tell us? For one thing, there appears to be a downward correlation between “prestige” (as measured by Am Law, Vault, etc.) and promotion rates. (The outlier here is of course Kirkland, with its huge classes of non-share partners.) That prestigious firms generally have lower promotion rates than less prestigious firms is no surprise; the magnitude of difference might be. Within the Am Law 200, some firms promote ten times — or more — the percentage of their lawyers than others. The data suggests that some firms prioritize associate development and satisfaction almost as highly as they do PPP — something that law students and young associates might do well to keep in mind.

(We look forward to revisiting the NavForward data in future posts. We encourage you to check out the data for yourself at its site.)

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