San Francisco based Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe announced Wednesday that as of this year it will no longer publish its average profit per partner. Profit per partner, long seen as the standard way to measure a law firm’s performance, was described as “no longer the right way to evaluate ourselves” by Orrick Chairman Ralph Baxter.
Baxter went on to say that the profit per partner metric gives clients a negative impression of the firm: “Clients don’t like the perception that law firms are organized to drive the income of its partners.”
In 2009, Orrick reported gross revenue of $847.5 million and profits per partner of $1.3 million.
