Source: WSJ.com: Law Blog – WSJ.com
The American Lawyer magazine is revising the 2010 and 2011 financial numbers it reported out for Dewey & LeBoeuf, which has been in the news recently over a rash of partner departures.
Click here for AmLaw’s post explaining the move, over at AmLaw Daily.
The quick backstory: Last month, the American Lawyer reported, based on information provided to the magazine by Dewey management, that the firm collected $935 million in gross revenues last year, up from about $910 million in 2010.
According to AmLaw, the magazine decided to undertake a review of the figures in light of this March 27 Bloomberg story, in which Dewey partner Richard Shutran said the firm earned $250 million in profits for 2011, far less than the $340 million figure reported by AmLaw three weeks earlier.
The Bloomberg report followed a March 21 story by the Wall Street Journal in which former partners said the firm’s 2011 revenues were around $780 million, not the $935 million figure reported by AmLaw.
AmLaw is now reporting that the revenue figure for 2011 is $782 million, up 3% from the previous year. In 2010, the gross revenue figure for Dewey was $759.5 million, not $910 million, according to the revised figures.
In the March 21 story, Shutran told the Journal that the American Lawyer uses different metrics to measure firm revenue than those used in general budget calculations. “They’re just not comparable numbers,” Shutran said. “That’s something people like to pick on.”
According to Tuesday’s American Lawyer story, Dewey maintains that the former numbers “were and are accurate and can be explained by methodological differences.”
Janis Meyer, Dewey’s general counsel, wrote in an e-mail to AmLaw that “the methodology used for internal and financial accounting purposes is different from that used in submitting our numbers to you, which we assume is the case for every law firm that participates in your survey.”
Emails seeking comment from spokespeople at both Dewey and the American Lawyer were not immediately returned.
