Kirkland & Ellis: Firm to Cease Sharing Financial Data with Media

Kirkland & Ellis — the biggest of them all, the firm that has spent years parked at the very top of Biglaw’s money charts — has decided it’s done showing its work. The firm told The American Lawyer it will no longer provide financial data to the media, which means no more Kirkland-supplied numbers for the Am Law 200, the annual ranking of Biglaw firms by revenue. Kirkland will join Wachtell Lipton and Slaughter & May in the freeze out of financial data to the media. Firm leadership “concluded that public reporting of our revenue and profits does not provide meaningful value to our clients nor adequately reflect the caliber of our firm’s legal services,” according to the letter. And because one lofty sentence is never enough, the firm went on: “Specifically, we believe the rankings could incentivize quantitative metrics over qualitative strengths while failing to capture the most important attributes of legal work — the quality of legal service and the outcomes achieved for clients,” the letter states. A conversation with Trustpoint.One CEO Christopher Gallagher.