The annual ranking of law firms by the National Law Journal is up. The biggest firm is Baker & McKenzie with 3,214 lawyers. The total number of lawyers included in the top 10 firms is, according to my calculations, 16,903. I’m not inclined to tabulate the total number in the top 50, but it’s close to 50,000 lawyers.
Let’s say it is only 45,000 lawyers in the top 50, and that each one bills an average of $175/hr (which is a conservative number for sure). If they each bill 2,000 hours per year the annual billables for lawyers in the top 50 law firms is about $15 billion per year. Sounds like a bargain, doesn’t it?
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