Legal News

It Ain?t 2007, But at Cravath, Revenues are Back on the Upswing

By Ashby Jones

Watching the 2009 revenue reports come in from the nation’s biggest law firms has been interesting. At many, revenue stayed steady. At others — especially those hit hard by the big across-the-board falloff in transactional work — the numbers were down.

But revenues were up at a lot of firms. And not just up a little, but up significantly.

That brings us to Cravath, Swaine & Moore. Writes Susan Beck of the American Lawyer in a piece out Thursday:

Cravath, Swaine & Moore joins the exclusive ranks of New York firms that achieved a significant jump in both revenue and profits per equity partner (PPP) last year. The firm’s revenue rose 7 percent to $569 million; PPP increased 8 percent to $2.7 million, according to our reporting.

Beck reports that the PPP improvement at Cravath wasn’t attributable to lawyer cuts — the firm instituted associate deferrals, but overall the firm’s lawyer headcount went up 8 percent.

So how’d it manage to improve over its 2008 numbers? Well, keep in mind that 2008 was a historically bad year for Cravath and others — and that the firm’s 2009 numbers are still well below where they were for 2007.

Still, reports Beck, the firm was busy on both the transactional and litigation sides:

The firm’s mergers and acquisitions group handled multi-billion dollar deals for longstanding clients such as Bristol-Myers, Time Warner, and IBM, plus special assignments from new clients like ACS, which was acquired by Xerox. On the securities side, the firm represented Mead Johnson in the first IPO of 2009, which broke a three-month freeze in the IPO market. In litigation, the firm achieved successful results for Morgan Stanley in its battles with Discover, as well as for Alcoa, Novartis, Massey Energy, and Credit Suisse.

It’s already got us thinking about 2010 numbers. Will they eclipse the 2007 figures or will they come in short of the pre-recession highs? That is to say: A year from now, will the biggest, wealthiest simply look back on 2008-09 as an unfortunate little dip in their continuing bull market? We’re eager to find out.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on March 18, 2010 (boomark / email).