The Size Of Biglaw Partnership Classes Is Shrinking
Bad news if you're trying to go for that brass ring.
Making partner at a Biglaw firm is the brass ring many a law school gunner has been aiming for. But getting to that level is getting increasingly difficult. According to a report from Law.com at AmLaw 200 firms the total number of promotions to partner has fallen over the last few years (since 2015) — a whopping 28.8 percent! In fact, 2018 was the smallest partnership class in 5 years.
It turns out if you have your eye on partnership you need to be more than an excellent lawyer:
“As a homegrown lawyer, it’s harder and harder to make equity partner,” says Kent Zimmermann, a law firm management consultant at the Zeughauser Group. “The bar has been going up, and it’s not good enough to just be a really high-quality lawyer anymore at most firms. You usually need to be highly productive in both doing the work and bringing the work in.”
And it’s more than just a bummer to folks that really want to make partner — it’s also hurting firms’ diversity efforts. Though there isn’t data available on the racial breakdown of partnership classes (but we’ve got plenty of anecdotal evidence), we do know the number of women making partner at AmLaw 200 firm was at a 5 year low last year — that means the goal of women making up 50 percent of the overall partnership class is further away than ever:
For over 10 years, the ratio of women to men entering law firms from law schools has been 1-to-1, and it was thought that, by now, women would make up 50 percent of partnership classes, says Sarretta McDonough, president of the National Association of Women Lawyers.
“It just demonstrates that law firms are not doing a good job of creating homegrown talent and making them partner,” McDonough says.
So what’s behind the low partnership number? Well, a lot of things. Firms desire to keep their profitability, and those all important PPP (profits per partner) numbers up. Not wanting to wait for new partners to find their rainmaking footing, many firms are looking to the white hot lateral market — as McDonough notes, “I fear that we’re playing musical chairs with a lot of limited lawyers and limited partners.” Plus, a lot of the older partners just don’t want to retire:
“The financial crisis in ‘08 hurt the retirement plans of a large swath of partners who feel the need to keep earning and try to hold on at their firms, even though they’re underproductive, and some firms are permissive of those people hanging on,” Zimmermann says.
So yes, even though the attorneys that are up for partner may have survived the lean financial crisis years, it is still wreaking havoc on the trajectory of their career.
Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, and host of The Jabot podcast. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter (@Kathryn1).
