Welcome To The ‘Kirklandization’ Of Biglaw, Partners!

Ed. note // : Welcome to our daily feature, Quote of the Day.

This is the continuation of a trend, which is not ending in the near future — the sort of the Kirklandization of the industry. A lot of the traditional firms that looked down on [the nonequity tier] have since come around. The whole industry is going in that direction.

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— Matthew Bersani, a legal recruiter with the Cliff Group, in comments given to the American Lawyer on the expansion of nonequity partnership tiers across Biglaw firms. As Bersani notes, Kirkland & Ellis, one of the most successful Biglaw firms in the world, has effectively used its vast troop of nonequity partners to boost the firm’s profits into the stratosphere. More than half of the firm’s partners are in the nonequity tier.

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Staci Zaretsky is a senior editor at Above the Law, where she’s worked since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on Twitter and Threads or connect with her on LinkedIn.

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Biglaw, Kirkland & Ellis, Partner Issues, Quote of the Day