The American Lawyer‘s Corporate Scorecard ranks firms according to the amount of transactional work they handled in nine key areas — although in 2009′s sluggish economy, the real story was how little work firms did. M&A work was off 34 percent from an already-difficult 2008, and the volume of asset-backed securities work fell by 88 percent. The exception was bankruptcy: Forty-two firms with assets of $1 billion or more filed for Chapter 11 protection in 2009, a jump of 40 percent from 2008. Four of 2009′s filings — those of General Motors, Chrysler, CIT and Thornburg Mortgage — were among the ten largest public company filings ever.