Top Law Schools

I have two quick biglaw questions:

1. How many biglaw firms are there in the United States? I believe that there are about a 100 or so?

2. Why do biglaw firms offer such competitive salaries? Why are they usually more financially stable than smaller firms?

1. There's no absolute definition. Its probably larger than the V100 but smaller than the NLJ250.

2. They make more money, have wealthier clients, and bill more hours. I'm not sure if you can say that Biglaw tends to be more financially stable than smaller firms. Lots of BigLaw firms proved that they are terrible at managing themselves.

Biglaw is a combination of Vault 100 and AmLaw 100. Taken together and removing double rankings, it probably comes out to the top 125 firms in the country, as there are only a few that are on one list but not the other.

BigLaw represent the top companies, have the high end practices, charge the highest bills, consistently work on the most complex cases, and generally are regarded as the top lawyers in the country. Companies pay for this talent, which is why the associates recieve high salaries. This is the short answer, which is filled with assumptions that only the long answer would be able to articulate.

If by biglaw you mean big money paid to new associates ($100k+), the NLJ250 is a decent approximation.