Numbers, oddly, equal emotion. One of the first things you learn in business reporting is that the seemingly scientific world of figures often comes down to all-too human feelings of ambition, fear, frustration, greed and pride. Take the Global 100 – or, for that matter, all leagues of law firm performance – beauty and ugliness remain in the eye of the beholder. Law firm leaders look into that mirror of metrics and see hugely contradictory reflections that back the strategic decisions they have bet their careers on.
Yet the more I look at such leagues the less certain I am that they prove or disprove the value of any particular strategy; the last 10 years have seen plenty of Global 25 firms prove to be indifferent performers on a range of measures.
