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Our departments serve as home bases from which our individual lawyers conduct their practices. New associates generally join a department when they complete their first year with the firm. As practices evolve, some lawyers change departments or become involved in projects in another department. In addition, because the complex legal issues we handle often call upon multiple disciplines, special teams often form across practice areas to meet our clients' needs.

 
Corporate partner Raj Marphatia regularly works with tax associates Beth Elliott (Harvard Law School '03), left, and Melissa Haley (Harvard Law School '01), right, in structuring complex investment partnerships.

Our 2008 submission to NALP reports the following information as to the allocation of our 868 lawyers among the firm's six departments and four offices (note that unassigned lawyers are shown in the department(s) in which they principally practice, and lawyers splitting between departments are shown in both departments):

Practice Areas No. Partners
No. Associates &
Other Lawyers
  Corporate 135 366
  Litigation 68 220
  Intellectual Property 66 127
  Tax & Benefits 23 58
  Health Care 17 53
  Private Client Group 12 17
  Bankruptcy & Business Restructuring 11 17
  Labor & Employment 6 10

Our firm has grown steadily across all departments. In recent years, for example, associates have become partner in each of our six departments. Our overall success rate to partnership — since 1995, approximately 16% of the associates who originally comprised the classes considered for partnership in that period have been made partners in the firm — is exceptional among top-tier firms.

 
Gabrielle Higgins and Rich Feustel are two of the ten Ropes & Gray associates who were promoted to partner in November 2007. Gabrielle practices in the Palo Alto office, and Rich practices in the Boston office, having relocated there from the New York office.