DENTONS' SUCCESSFUL CHALLENGE OF THE AMERICAN LAWYER
Rather than note that Dentons declined to report a global profits per equity partner number, The American Lawyer initially concocted an erroneous average global profits per equity partner number for its AmLaw 100 rankings and published it in its May 2015 issue.
In doing so, The American Lawyer surely should have known that its own figure was false. The magazine was aware that Dentons’ US profits per equity partner increased 5% in 2014. Similarly, it also knew from published reports that the Firm’s UKMEA profits per equity partner increased 26%. With the US and UKMEA representing 56% of Dentons’ global revenues in 2014, profits per equity partner would have to have declined by 38% elsewhere in the Firm to reach the 10% global decline asserted by The American Lawyer.
Quite simply, in light of the data publicly available, there is no logical method that The American Lawyer could have used to generate its published figures.
Indeed, even within the confines of its own reporting, The American Lawyer is internally inconsistent. In May 2014, the magazine reported that Dentons had a global profits per equity partner of $625,000. In its May 2015 issue, the magazine reported that Dentons had a change of “-10.0% (to $495,000).” Had Dentons’ global profits per equity partner been down 10% from 2014, the magazine should have calculated a new global profits per equity partner of $562,000, not $495,000, for Dentons.
In virtually every way, The American Lawyer’s math simply did not work.
This carelessness only underscores The American Lawyer’s reckless disregard for the truth.