The Global 200's Secrets and What They Tell Us

The top of the Global 200 table reveals few truths about the future of the legal industry's upper crust—it's the middle and the bottom of the table you should pay more attention to, writes The Global Lawyer.

I'm Krishnan Nair, Managing Editor at Law.com International, bringing you this week's edition of The Global Lawyer.

For anyone familiar with the composition of the global legal elite, this year’s Global 200 table will have produced few surprises. With $6.5 billion in sales, Kirkland & Ellis reigns supreme, and the vereins press up against other U.S. elites to round off the top 10.

But then the secrets of the Global 200 don’t often appear at the table’s upper reaches. For the first time, a Brazilian law firm entered the 200, Mattos Filho, with a revenue of $263.9 million, closing in on firms perhaps better known on the international stage, including Watson Farley & Williams, the U.K.’s Stephenson Harwood and China’s Fangda.

It comes at a time when Brazil is weathering global economic strife better than most, according to Deloitte, and when a combination of regulations favorable to arbitration and slow local courts have driven disputes into arbitration in Brazil, with the nation now seeing almost as many new arbitrations as the U.S., as LatAm reporter Amy Guthrie reported.

Latin America is a growing market, with an abundance of opportunities, particularly for Spanish and Portuguese-speaking lawyers. Major European law firm Cuatrecasas—which placed 149th this year—has, for example, made no secret of its desire to take up more market share in the region.

The table yielded more secrets...

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