For journalists, ill winds usually bring a few benefits, not least that readers have greater interest in what we’re churning out. But while it’s a good time for industry anoraks to get the attention they crave, it’s not the pieces I’ve done in 2020 on crisis, coronavirus or even Black Lives Matter that have attracted the biggest audience. The most read was an article from March focused on the two-horse race between the world’s largest law firms, Kirkland & Ellis and Latham & Watkins, and its wider relevance for the high-end legal market.
That speaks to the extraordinary interest among peers in Kirkland, which has defied expectations to batter its way to the top of the global market in the last decade, much to the startled unease of traditional elites in New York and London.
