So what exactly qualifies as BIGLAW?

[Rajah]

Any firm in the Vault 100? AMLAW 250? Any firm that pays market?

What is the cutoff for a firm to be considered BIGLAW?

[nealric]

That's like asking what does "justice" mean.

A 1,000 philosophers could ponder it for a 1,000 years and never be satisfied with the definition 

[OldCraig]

"BIGLAW" I believe, is any lawfirm with nationwide offices/recognition - This entails offices in the big cities - Chicago, Boston, New York, Washington, DC, Los Angeles, Atlanta, etc.

Some more regional firms might have 300 attorneys, but they have more of a regional reputation and client-base. These firms can still pay next-to-market salaries, though they're usually a bit below it, but I don't think they're considered "BIGLAW".

That being said, some firms, like DLA PIPER, have 3,700 lawyers globally. Now, if that's not big law, I don't know what is.

[bitblaster]

Biglaw consists solely of the 10 most prestigious firms on vault.com.

[lukeache]

I wonder what type of "scientifical methodology" they use to determine "prestige score" for each firm, what a bunch of BS

[bitblaster]

I wonder what type of "scientifical methodology" they use to determine "prestige score" for each firm, what a bunch of BS

"In total 15,350 attorneys returned anonymous surveys to Vault. Associates from all over the country and the world responded. We heard from lawyers in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Palo Alto, Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, Houston, Dallas, Washington, D.C., Miami, Cleveland, Seattle, Orlando, Phoenix and Atlanta, among many other domestic locations, not to mention Hong Kong, London, Paris and beyond. The online survey asked attorneys to score each of the 156 law firms on a scale of 1 to 10 based on how prestigious it is to work for the firm. Associates were asked to ignore any firm with which they were unfamiliar and were not allowed to rank their own firm.

We collected all the surveys and averaged the score for each firm. The firms were then ranked in order, starting with the highest average prestige score as No. 1 on down to determine the Vault Top 100. Remember that in the Top 100, Vault is not assessing firms by profit, size, lifestyle, number of deals or quality of service; we are ranking the most prestigious law firms based on the perceptions of currently practicing lawyers at peer firms."

http://www.vault.com/nr/lawrankings.jsp?law2009=7&ch_id=242

[Rajah]

I just wonder if there was a consensus of what BIGLAW was? I would imagine every person would agree the Vault 100 or AMLAW 100 are all BIGLAW. But do some definitions go beyond that?

[nealric]

There are some Amlaw 250 firms that I think qualify pretty clearly.

[intel]

those that pay market?

[SteveP]

Any firm with a human resources infrastructure that looks like a pyramid scheme?

I kid.