Law Firm Rankings 2011: Vault Law 100

How does Vault come up with its list of the Top 100 firms in the country? The first step is to compile a list of the most renowned law firms in the land by reviewing the feedback we receive from previous surveys, consulting our previous lists, poring over legal newspapers, talking to lawyers in the field and checking out other published rankings. This year, our list was made up of 165 law firms. We asked these 165 law firms to distribute a password-protected online survey to their associates. More than 15,000 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 165 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.
Many thanks to the 15,000+ survey respondents for your insights!
 

2011 RANK	2010 RANK	CHANGE	FIRM	PRESTIGE SCORE	LOCATION
1	1		Wachtell Lipton Rosen & Katz	8.953	New York, NY
2	2		Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP	8.653	New York, NY
3	4		Sullivan & Cromwell LLP	8.335	New York, NY
4	3		Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP and Affiliates	8.181	New York, NY
5	5		Davis Polk & Wardwell	8.103	New York, NY
6	7		Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP	7.855	New York, NY
7	6		Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP	7.847	New York, NY
8	11		Williams & Connolly LLP	7.749	Washington, DC
9	8		Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP	7.735	New York, NY
10	9		Covington & Burling LLP	7.540	Washington, DC
11	10		Kirkland & Ellis LLP	7.514	Chicago, IL
12	13		Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP	7.388	New York, NY
13	12		Debevoise & Plimpton LLP	7.354	New york, NY
14	14		Gibson Dunn & Crutcher LLP	7.220	Los Angeles, CA
15	17		Latham & Watkins LLP	7.212	Los Angeles, CA
16	15		Sidley Austin LLP	7.088	Chicago, IL
17	16		WilmerHale	6.973	Washington, DC
18	19		Jones Day	6.927	Washington, DC
19	23		Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan LLP	6.844	Los Angeles, CA
20	20		White & Case LLP	6.777	New York, NY
21	18		Arnold & Porter LLP	6.775	Washington, DC
22	21		Shearman & Sterling LLP	6.751	New York, NY
23	30		Boies, Schiller & Flexner LLP	6.742	New York, NY
24	22		O'Melveny & Myers LLP	6.707	Los Angeles, CA
25	24		Ropes & Gray LLP	6.618	Boston, MA

 For more : http://www.vault.com/wps/portal/usa/rankings/individual?rankingId1=2&rankingId2=-2&rankings=1&rankingYear=2011&regionId=0