Starting this past summer, Associate Professor of Law William Henderson, of the Indiana University School of Law—Bloomington and I have been working behind the scenes on the "Law Firm Research Project."  Prof. Henderson teaches a course called "The Law Firm as a Business Organization," whose title alone gives away that he and I share no small array of common professional interests. (I'll be a guest lecturer for the course in November.)

What the project entails, why we started it, and what we hope that both you and we can get out of it, I can now share with you.

Most simply stated, the project is an endeavor to create a wide-ranging (I hesitate to say "thorough," much less "exhaustive") database capturing key characteristics of the AmLaw 200 firms.  Moreover, we are using every effort to capture the same data as of 2004 and back in 1999—in case any time-longitudinal trends emerge.

What kind of data?  Lots of it, to begin with:  The current version lives in an Excel spreadsheet that runs from cell A1 to cell BX224 (on the primary tab alone), and includes items ranging from the breathtakingly obvious to the more obscure:

• total firm revenue, 1999 and 2004;
• profits per partner (same);
• number of non-equity and equity partners and total lawyers;
• associate satisfaction, diversity, and pro bono measures (ranked 1—200);
• etc.

In turn, we've subdivided the firms by market league, as follows:

• International (3 firms)
• National (25 firms)
• New York City (34)
• "Major" markets (54:  essentially firms with between 1,000 and 3,000 lawyers, headquartered in Chicago, DC, LA, or SF)
• "Middle" markets (50:  with fewer than 1,000 lawyers, headquartered in Atlanta, Boston, Dallas, Houston, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Richmond, and Seattle)
• "Regional" markets (35:  all other smaller AmLaw 200 firms, headquartered in cities like Cincinnati, Cleveland, and Tampa).

So what?  Well, one obvious thing to do when confronted with data is to seek out correlations.  Here's one that tells a story about geographical location vs. diversity (the higher your score, the more diverse is your firm: mean scores for each segment):

• International:  158
• New York City:  138
• National:  118
• Major market:  117
• Middle market:  66
• Regional:  45

You would have surmised that based on instinct?  Good for you:  But now we've proven it.

This is the first of what will be many, many postings about the empirical gems lurking in the data.

But before I go, a word to any managing partners toying with a switch from single-tier all-equity partners to two-tier with non-equity as well:  Don't do it!

At the very least, invite me in for a long chat first.