Winners in 25 Metro Areas
from July/August 2006
Nine newcomers appear in the top spots in the Corporate Board Member /FTI survey’s 2006 local rankings, seven of them supplanting last year’s leaders in their areas and two moving up into a tie with the 2005 champs. The newcomers standing alone in first place are Sidley Austin in Chicago, Davis Graham & Stubbs in Denver, Honigman Miller Schwartz & Cohn in Detroit, O’Melveny & Myers in Los Angeles, Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom in New York, Reed Smith in Pittsburgh, and Cooley Godward in San Diego. Alston & Bird climbed into a tie with last year’s No. 1-ranked Atlanta firm, King & Spalding, and Moore & Van Allen did the same with Charlotte’s top 2005 firm, Robinson Bradshaw & Hinson.
Skadden Arps, our national leader and the top-ranked New York firm in 2004, reclaims its metro-area crown from Cravath Swaine & Moore, which comes in second this year in both the national and local polls.
Among the uncontested repeat champs are Foley & Lardner in Milwaukee and Dorsey & Whitney in Minneapolis. Both outfits have held on to their top local rankings for each of the six years in which we’ve asked directors to choose the firms in their areas that they would want to aid them on general legal matters.
The metro-area leaders are presented on the following pages, along with photos of legendary luminaries associated with the areas. One of those is indeed larger than life, and if you turn to page 42 you’ll see that we’re not just monkeying around.
In addition to identifying the outstanding law firms, we present a portfolio of influential and innovative attorneys in a range of cities. They include a gadfly who could become a director’s worst nightmare and an attorney who, as our writer sees it, has in effect “developed a turbine that can marshal the windiness of Washington political culture and convert it into sellable energy.”
Download the PDF.
