The 1000+ lawyers who work at Ropes & Gray were top graduates
from 95 law schools around the world. Twenty-two law schools
claim at least 10 graduates working at Ropes & Gray. More than
half of our lawyers attended law school in a different city from
the one they currently work in, illustrating the national scope of
our recruiting program. Many obtained graduate degrees in other fields,
or worked in other professions, before going to law school. While
our lawyers have followed widely divergent routes to Ropes & Gray,
they all joined the firm with the same goals in mind: to live in
one of the world's greatest cities, and practice law at the highest
level.
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Like many of our associates, Michael Burling (Boston University School of Law '03) worked for a period of time between college and law school. Michael was a chemist at Meta Environmental Inc. specializing in environmental forensics. |
The partnership is young, dynamic, and growing. Over half of
our partners joined the partnership in the last 10 years. Most worked
here for a summer, but each followed an individual path to partnership.
Unlike many firms today, we do not have a multitiered partnership — junior,
senior, income, equity, contract, and the like. Rather, Ropes & Gray
is a true partnership, standing together in a shared professional venture.
Our approach requires talented associates. As our practice continues to expand, we continue to hire selectively, train broadly, and staff leanly. We believe that long-term success depends on recruiting the most talented lawyers and creating opportunities for them at the firm and in our community. To illustrate, our submission to NALP in 1995 showed 169 associates, 6 of counsel, and 130 partners firmwide, and our 2011 submission showed 695 associates, 80 other lawyers, and 284 partners — a 347% increase in the number of lawyers in the firm. While profitability grew very substantially during that sixteen-year period, we remained stable in structure, and the number of associates per partner (2.4:1 in February) remained one of the lowest — and one of the best for associate opportunity — among all top-tier firms.
Our 2011 reports to NALP contain the following
information as to firm-wide diversity demographics:
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