The latest National Law Journal 250 reveals a great spurt in the growth of law firms for 2007 with the largest law firms expanding by 5.6 percent, the largest growth since 2001.
This, the 30th annual survey of the country’s largest law firms made by The National Law Journal reveals that there are now128,213 attorneys working at these firms.

This year, top spot holders since 1978, Baker & McKenzie with 3,335 attorneys was bested by DLA Piper and its 3,623 attorneys.

DLA Piper entered the top 25 just five years ago, reached the top 2 by 2005 and has now bagged first place.
Joint chief executive of the law firm Frank Burch is quoted as saying, “It really wasn’t very complicated. We’ve worked hard to wrap ourselves around institutional clients.”
There was also an encouraging 6.6 percent increase in the number of women attorneys who now number 41,558 among NLJ 250 law firms compared to last year’s 38,998. Women partners thus average out to 39.3 per cent.
The percentage of non equity partners (those not holding an ownership interest in the law firm) rose by 8.2 percent, this year.
A profusion of wholesale mergers was the main reason for the growth of individual law firms. The largest merger assessed by percentage gain was between two New York firms, LeBoeuf, Lamb, Greene & MacRae, (713 attorneys in 2006) and Dewey Ballantine, (544 attorneys in 2006). The new firm, Dewey & LeBoeuf with its 1,398 attorneys was at number 11 on this year’s NLJ 250.
In comparison, several firms have shrunk quite noticeably in 2007, the most obvious being that of Adams and Reese with a decline of 15 percent, to 256 attorneys from 301.