Are the nation’s most successful litigators and trial lawyers predominately graduates of elite national law schools? Surprisingly, the answer is both yes and no—it depends whether the lawyer is representing the plaintiff or the defense. Let me first cover the empirical evidence. In a subsequent blog entry, I will offer some possible explanations.

I relied upon two sources to select (albeit imperfectly) the nation’s most successful plaintiffs’ attorneys: (1) the National Law Journal’s 2003 “Plaintiffs’ Hot List,” which highlights 25 plaintiff-side law firms with a track record of large settlements and judgments (often in class action litigation); and (2) the Inner Circle of 100, which is an invitation-only society of the nation’s best plaintiffs’ lawyers.

Of these two sources, the Inner Circle is probably the more obscure. Yet, the Inner Circle includes many familiar names, including Johnnie Cochran, Joe Jamail, and Senator John Edwards. Membership criterion includes at least 50 personal injury jury trials and at least one seven-figure verdict. According to the Inner Circle’s website, “Most of our members have won many multimillion dollar verdicts for their clients.”

Using 2004 U.S. News & World Report rankings to categorize law schools, here is a breakdown of where the Inner Circle and Hot List lawyers got their law degrees:

Top 25 law school graduates make up only 32% of the Inner Circle and 44% of the Hot List. In the case of the Hot List, this figure is upwardly skewed by a handful of plaintiffs’ firms with hiring criteria similar to elite Am Law 100 defense firms. For example, over two-thirds of all lawyers at five Hot List firms (Shute Milhaly & Weinberger, Lieff Cabraser, Gibbs & Bruns, Sprenger & Lang, and Sussman & Godfrey) are graduates of Top 25 law schools. Among the remaining 20 firms on the Hot List, 36% attended a Top 25 law school, which is quite comparable to the 32% among the Inner Circle.

The composition of the elite defense bar presents quite a contrast. As a representative sample, I selected five firms from Vault.com’s 2005 list of the most prestigious law firms, with an eye toward geographic diversity: Wachtell Lipton (NYC), Williams & Connelly (D.C.), Munger Tolles & Olson (L.A. & San Francisco), Foley & Lardner (> 100 lawyers in Milwaukee, Chicago, and DC), and Akin Gump (>100 lawyers in DC, NYC, Dallas and LA). The sample breaks down as follows:

Although some readers might argue that the rarefied hiring practices of Wachtell Lipton, Williams & Connelly, and Munger Tolles upwardly skew the number of Top 25 law school graduates, these three firms are relatively small and comprise less than 24 percent of the sample. (Moreover, shouldn’t the “best” be compared to the “best”?) Yet, even if these three firms are excluded, Top 25 law school graduates make up 54.6% of remaining lawyers (i.e., Akin Gump and Foley & Lardner combined).

In summary, the elite defense bar is dominated by graduates of Top 25 law school (63.7% of the five-firm sample). In contrast, only 32% of the Inner Circle and 44% of Plaintiffs’ Hot List are graduates of these same elite national law schools.

This data raises the following question: Since the payday of the nation’s most successful plaintiffs’ lawyers dwarfs the income of Am Law 200 partners, why are the nation’s “best” law schools underrepresented in the elite plaintiffs’ bar?

Before you retort that the “expected” income in an Am Law 200 firm is much higher than a career as a plaintiffs’ lawyer, you might want to ask whether the maturation of the high-end plaintiffs’ bar necessarily makes that a correct assumption. For example, two recent entrants to the Am Law 200 (Boies Schiller and Kasowitz Benson, with PPP in 2003 of $2.2 and $2.9 million respectively) specialize in contingency work.

Another interesting question is whether the “true” distribution of talent for high-stakes litigation more closely resembles the composition of the Inner Circle and the Plaintiffs’ Hot List. Perhaps the attributes of successful trial lawyers are poorly correlated with the entrance criteria of the nation’s elite national law schools.

I would welcome readers’ thoughts. I will revisit this issue in later posts.