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A firm’s ranking is based on the number of times it was hired to represent a litigant in a given practice area in 2006 and 2005, respectively.
A company’s ranking is based on how frequently it was named as a party to a lawsuit for a given practice area in 2006 and 2005, respectively, regardless of whether it was named as a defendant, plaintiff or third party.
Thus, the survey is completely quantitative. It does not account for the importance of a case, the amount of work involved for the lawyers such as billable hours incurred, the proposed damages, or any eventual settlements or awards.
The source for our data is electronic court dockets supplied by a leading docket vendor. No law firms or companies were contacted for this survey.
Using dockets, we surveyed new cases filed before federal courts (district courts, bankruptcy courts and appeals courts) for each “nature of suit” we track:
| Nature of suit | PACER code |
|---|---|
| Antitrust | 410 |
| Bankruptcy* | Chapter 11 |
| Copyrights** | 820 |
| Employment: civil rights | 442 |
| Employment: disabilities | 445 |
| Employment: labor | 710, 720, 730, 740, 790 |
| ERISA | 791 |
| Patents | 830 |
| Product liability | 195, 245, 315, 345, 355, 365, 368, 385 |
| Securities | 850 |
| Trademarks | 840 |
*Copyright figures were normalized to exclude music piracy litigation, which would skew survey results due to the vast number of lawsuits filed by the music industry.
**Only chapter 11 cases were surveyed. Other types of bankruptcies, such as chapter 7 bankruptcies, were not included.
These results were cross-checked against a list of the 300 largest law firms in the United States, based on the Winter 2007 edition of the Law Firms Yellow Book published by the Leadership Directories.
A firm was counted as being hired for litigation for a case regardless of cause. In other words, firms were counted whether they were hired for the defense, the plaintiff or third parties, unless otherwise noted.
Only new cases and appeals were counted, regardless of whether they proceeded to trial or not. The survey did not make any special considerations or exemptions for multi-jurisdictional litigation, case transfers, or class certifications.
In cases where law firms have merged in the past year, the results for those firms were consolidated. The following mergers were accounted for:
Although the editors have made every effort to ascertain the accuracy of our data, using a team of researchers and double-checking every data point, we assume no responsibility for errors in the survey.
If any corrections to the survey are required, they will be made on March 15, 2007. Anyone who purchased the survey will be notified of the corrections, if any, on that date.
Questions and concerns about the methodology of the survey should be submitted by e-mail to research@portfoliomedia.com.