Academic

The U.S. News ranked law firms for the first time this week, but of course law firms are ranked by other sources.  Most of those rankings involve objective criteria:  revenue; profits per partner; size of transactions; etc.  This ranking was based on both objective information and thousands of surveys (with hundreds of questions) given to clients, attorneys and recruiters.

What is interesting about it to this blogger?  First, the rankings don't actually "rank."  Firms are placed into one of three tiers.  Here is the rationale:

Because firms were often separated by small or insignificant differences in overall score, they have been tiered rather than ranked sequentially. In general, the first tier includes those firms that scored within a certain percentage of the highest-scoring firm(s); the second tier, those firms that scored within a certain percentage of the next highest scoring firm(s), etc.

But we can tell a difference between Yale, Harvard, Stanford, etc.?

Also, firms are ranked on the basis of 81 practice areas and also within particular geographic area (i.e., Boston or Houston) or on a nationwide basis.

So my firms (Baker Botts & Skadden) did well.  Notably, Skadden (who I think hit the jackpot with the most National Tier 1 practice areas of any NY firm and the most NY Tier 1 practice areas) is listed as "National Tier 1" for both Energy and Project Finance.  however, the Houston office is not ranked in either of these areas, though that office is principally engaged in Energy Project Finance.  Weird.