IPOs may be in the tank, M&A in the doldrums, and skyrocketing investment portfolios a distant memory. But don’t look for much evidence of crisis in this year’s Am Law 100 financial survey-most of the nation’s top-grossing law firms are just now starting to feel the pinch. Instead, results from fiscal year 2000 show firms bathing in the afterglow of the country’s largest-ever peacetime economic expansion.
Yet even last year some firms were already cresting the summit for the glide down, with exploding associate costs eating into profits. Partners at firms that didn’t achieve double-digit revenue growth generally saw their take stay flat or fall. Ever resourceful, many Am Law 100 firms are engineering a way out of this trap. At firm after firm, a sizable growth in revenue was paired with a healthy decline in the number of partners showing up for those Saturday morning get-togethers [see "Trimming the Ranks" chart, page 16].
