The American Lawyer published an interesting read called: “Are Blue Chip NY Firms Losing Their Balance?” available via law.com.
A particularly interesting fact, which helps put the current dismal financials into perspective, is that, in the 4 year run-up to the 2008 melt-down, many of these elite firms saw their profits per partner increase something like 60, and in some cases 80 or 90%!
Some of this increase was the result of leveraging up — several had leverage ratios in excess of 4:1. The least leveraged of the elite 15 had a ratio of 2.9:1.