Top US partners earning $3.4 million

INCOME: Skadden Arps Slate Meahger & Flom tops the $1 billion turnover mark

Profits per equity partner of $3.4 million (2.3 million) have seen New York firm Wachtell Lipton Rosen & Katz reinstated as the most profitable law firm in the US, and probably the world, according to the American Lawyer's annual survey of the top 100 US firms.The survey also saw Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom top the $1 billion revenue mark for the first time at the head of the pack.

In total, the top 100 firms' turnover exceeded $26 billion in 1999, a 17.5% rise on 1998, which in turn was 14.6% up on 1997.Last year's most profitable firm, Minneapolis firm Robins Kaplan Miller & Ciresi, returned to the number two position, after a year spent at the top by virtue of profits from tobacco litigation.

Its equity partners made a profit of $3.1 million.

Next best was Cravath Swaine & Moore's $2.1 million.

The survey found that average annual profits for all partners across the top 100 have risen by 34% to $755,000 over the past ten years.

Fifteen of the top 100 firms' average profits per partner are now more than a million dollars.Clifford Chance's US law firm, Rogers & Wells, was one of the five firms with the most profits-per-partner growth in the past decade.

Placing it 45th, with $253 million revenue (excluding Clifford Chance's figures, which would take it above $1 billion too), the survey said Rogers & Wells had the 15th best profits per equity partner ($1.1 million).Behind Skadden Arps on the main revenue table came, as last year, Baker & McKenzie ($818 million), Jones Day Reavis & Pogue ($595 million) and Latham & Watkins ($582 million).

Shearman & Sterling ($491 million) jumped to fifth, replacing Davis Polk & Wardwell ($460 million), which fell to eighth.

Weil Gotshal & Manges has lost its top ten ranking in favour of McDermott Will & Emery.Meanwhile, US lawyers are doing less pro bono work, the survey found.

The average in 1999 was 36.3 hours - or eight minutes a day - compared to the high of 56.3 hours in 1992.

Anne Mizzi

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