‘The measure of success‘, the subject so thoughtfully discussed by Phillip Fletcher on 5 June, has two aspects: how do we – how does the outside world – measure our firms’ success and compare it to that of other firms, and how do we internally measure and evaluate the success of our lawyers, our offices and practice groups or departments and compare it to that of other lawyers and offices within our firms?
The external aspect depends in the first place on what kind of data legal publications request, analyse and put into their tables; there are few reliable sources of information besides these tables (not all of which are entirely reliable either – some, especially in continental Europe, appear to be based on a bit of creative guesswork more than on hard data). A notable exception is the work done by Citibank in the US which, to those participating in its surveys, provides highly useful comparisons and supplemental data beyond those published in the annual tables. In Europe there is nothing comparable.
