Let's be clear: in this market, the "best" law firm is the one that will employ you. If you have a job, congratulations, you're number one. But the methods for evaluating the large law firms that are best at the business of practicing law are stuck in the past. The new normal means new challenges for firms. Is bigger always better? More revenue sounds nice, unless the firm is overly reliant on a few rainmakers who can jump ship and leave the rest of the firm scrambling for clients. Surely, the last client who cared about white-shoe status is somewhere trying to find a new ribbon for his typewriter.

With these rankings, Above the Law is trying to capture the strength and relevance of major law firms in today's market. Who are the market leaders? Which firms are still making and retaining their partners? Where do you want to work? Power, post-recession, is about what you are, not what you used to be.

The Power 100 blends objective data points (changes in headcount over time, promotional prospects, and number of women partners) with subjective feedback from over 20,000 associates, partners, and other members of the legal community. The result is a more complete picture of each firm, encompassing employee satisfaction, compensation, reputation, desirability as an employer, and data-driven measures of firm growth. The Power 100 is meant to offer a new perspective on some of the most prestigious and wealthy firms by using a new rubric to show how they stack up against the competition.

Rank	2016 Rank	Firm	Score
1	1	Cravath, Swaine & Moore	78.77
2	5	Kirkland & Ellis	78.49
3	13	Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan	76.58
4	14	Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz	76.37
5	10	Covington & Burling	75.91
6	7	Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison	75.71
7	4	Latham & Watkins	75.64
8	3	Simpson Thacher & Bartlett	75.27
9	2	Boies, Schiller & Flexner	74.47
10	8	Sullivan & Cromwell	74.3
11	15	Sidley Austin	74.18
12	6	Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom	73.89
13	18	Williams & Connolly	73.76
14	12	Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton	73.57
15	19	Debevoise & Plimpton	72.23
16	22	Shearman & Sterling	71.73
17	17	Weil, Gotshal & Manges	71.66
18	20	Jones Day	71.61
19	24	Ropes & Gray	71.33
20	9	Davis Polk & Wardwell	71.3
21	34	Paul Hastings LLP	71.05
22	16	Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr	70.61
23	11	Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher	70.58
24	39	Irell & Manella	70.4
25	25	Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld	69.87
26	32	Mayer Brown	69.7
27	41	Proskauer Rose	69.38
28	38	Hogan Lovells	69.32
29	31	Cooley	69.31
30	33	Morrison & Foerster	69.24
31	46	Vinson & Elkins	69.1
32	26	Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy	69.06
33	48	Fried Frank Harris Shriver & Jacobson	69.03
34	42	Munger Tolles & Olson	69
35	37	Arnold & Porter	68.98
36	50	Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman	68.25
37	28	O'Melveny & Myers	67.9
38	45	King & Spalding	67.77
39	29	Perkins Coie	67.63
40	27	Willkie Farr & Gallagher	67.52
41	39	Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe	67.48
42	81	Jenner & Block	67.43
43	21	Cahill Gordon & Reindel	67.07
44	35	McDermott Will & Emery	67.06
45	30	White & Case	66.91
46	60	Sheppard Mullin	66.83
47	44	Morgan, Lewis & Bockius	66.8
48	69	Susman Godfrey	66.78
49	40	Fish & Richardson	66.7
50	36	Goodwin Procter	66.69
51	47	Baker & McKenzie	65.85
52	23	Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati	65.41
53	61	Dechert	64.8
54	87	Davis Wright Tremaine	64.54
55	39	Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft	64.07
56	51	Steptoe & Johnson LLP	63.81
57	55	Winston & Strawn	63.73
58	57	Norton Rose Fulbright	63.66
59	43	Alston & Bird	63.52
60	52	DLA Piper	63.51
61	68	Fenwick & West	63.41
62	62	Reed Smith	63.19
63	58	Foley and Lardner	62.68
64	54	Baker Botts	62.42
65	71	Crowell & Moring	60.87
66	80	Shook, Hardy & Bacon	60.83
67	53	Baker & Hostetler	60.81
68	66	Haynes and Boone	60.34
69	59	Dentons	60.31
70	56	Greenberg Traurig	60.29
70	67	Bryan Cave	60.29
71	83	Venable	59.5
72	64	Katten Muchin Rosenman	58.63
73	73	Seyfarth Shaw	58.55
74	82	Hunton & Williams	58.47
75		Linklaters	58.04
76	100	Schulte Roth & Zabel	57.99
77	74	Bracewell & Giuliani	57.93
78	75	Nixon Peabody	57.5
79	72	Drinker Biddle & Reath	57.27
80		Allen & Overy	57.26
81	91	Wiley Rein	56.89
82	79	Foley Hoag	56.27
83	84	Mintz Levin	56.05
84	77	McGuireWoods	55.82
85	90	Locke Lord LLP	55.71
86		Stinson Leonard Street LLP	55.54
87		Freshfields Bruckhaus Derringer	55.49
88		Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler	55.31
88	95	Holland & Knight	55.31
89		Brown Rudnick	55.21
90	92	Duane Morris	55.08
91		Hughes Hubbard & Reed	54.98
92	85	Dorsey & Whitney	54.97
93		Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney	54.66
94	88	Schiff Hardin	54.54
95	63	Squire Patton Boggs	54.14
96		Thompson & Knight	53.85
97	49	K&L Gates	53.78
98	98	Kaye Scholer	53.65
99	94	Blank Rome	53.63
100		Jackson Walker	53.59

---

This past summer, we conducted the ATL Law Firm Reputation Survey, asking those of you working in Biglaw to rate your peers and competitors. For our purposes, we split “reputation” into two distinct aspects: 1) the reputed strength and quality of a firm’s practice, and 2) the perceived desirability of the firm as a potential employer. (For some, these factors will be functionally equivalent. For others, these are less overlapping considerations.) In addition, the ATL Law Firm Reputation Survey asked respondents to rate firms in their specific market for both practice quality as well as desirability as potential employers. (In creating the survey, we limited our city-specific firm choices to offices with at least 50 lawyers.)

Firms are rated on a scale with 100 possible points:

• Market-specific reputation survey
  “Strength and quality of practice”: 35%
  “Potential employer”: 15%
• Leverage
  Ratio of equity partners to all other attorneys: 5%
• Growth/decay
  % change in headcount since 2010: 5%
• Percentage of women partners: 5%
• Partnership prospects
  % of all non-partners who made partner in the most recent promotion cycle: 5%
• Insider satisfaction
  ATL Insider Survey: 5%
• Compensation rating: 25%*

Obviously, we are making value judgments in choosing and assigning weight to these metrics. For example, we are rewarding firms for maintaining low leverage, or for offering a relatively better chance for incoming associates to eventually ascend to partnership. Also, to be sure, law firms are not homogenous in their approaches to partnership tracks or compensation structures or other aspects that we have sought to measure here, but we have done our best to account for these differences and create a formula that allows for meaningful comparisons.

The perfect "ATL score" is 100. Each firm is awarded a maximum number of points based on the weight of each metric (a maximum of 25 points for highest compensation rating, 5 points for highest growth headcount, etc.). The points are awarded on a sliding scale from highest to lowest. (For certain categories, firms were placed into tiers and points were apportioned accordingly.) Those points add up to the total ATL score seen on the rankings table.

* Compensation rating accounts for the following 4 factors: first-year salary, recent track record for bonuses, profits per partner (as reported to Am Law), and survey data.