An exclusive study conducted by The McCormick Group has revealed that more than 70 percent of the AmLaw 200 provide bios of their top-level administrators on their websites.
This confirms several recent articles that have pointed out increasing respect given by large law firms to top leadership beyond the firms’ chairs and managing partner.
The study found that 73.2 percent of the AmLaw 200 (because of two recent mergers, only 198 firms were studied) currently include bios of at least one top-level officials on their websites. Interestingly, nearly 15 percent of those firms list only one, however (in most cases, the Chief Operating Officer). In many cases, the firms are listing, not only their C-level professionals, but also key directors and managers.
Firms in the AmLaw 50 were the least likely to include bios of their top administrative leaders, with only 62 percent including those bios. The percentage for New York-based firms in the top 50 was significantly lower, as only five of 13 firms (38.5 percent) listed their top people.
Outside of the top 50, roughly the same percentage of firms in each quadrant listed their C-level professionals. With that, the study found that in the second 100 firms were much more likely to list just one official.
While we couldn’t find comparable information indicating how many firms had included their top management executives in the past, most observers indicate that including bios of top administrative professionals is a phenomenon of the past 5-10 years.
This study is just another sign that the legal industry has become even more professionalized. In an increasing number of cases, clients are more interested in gaining direct access to legal professionals in law firms that provide key services in areas such as pricing, legal project management, cybersecurity, knowledge management, innovation, and diversity and inclusion than they are to individual attorneys. And we expect that these professionals will become even more valuable to clients in the future.
