Dentons takes out adverts to lambast American Lawyer (original) (raw)
Dentons' public spat with American Lawyer Magazine reached a new low this week when the firm launched a website and took a series of advertisements to vent its spleen.
The firm announced in 2014 that it would no longer release its global profit per equity partner data, claiming that it made no sense given that the firm operates in such a wide variety of markets. AM Lawyer pointed out that other firms that operate in global markets were happy to provide the figures, suggested that Dentons was simply coy because its results were shoddy and had a stab at coming up with them themselves. All hell broke loose, with Dentons accusing the editor of being unable to count and angry, open letters being fired out.
AM Lawyer did the same thing again last month when it suggested that global profits had fallen and came up with its own figures. Again, Dentons was having none of it and issued a "correction demand" for figures that were "clearly false". AM Lawyer said it stood by them. The market awaited the outcome with eager anticipation.
And that outcome is the website www.accuracy100.com, set up by Dentons to address the slurs published by AM Lawyer. It says that AM Lawyer "concocted" its figures "without any attribution, and made erroneous extrapolations to draw grossly inaccurate conclusions". Dentons is still not publishing its figures but has confirmed that its "global profit per equity partner increased in 2014, not decreased as erroneously reported by The American Lawyer".
There is a wealth of information on the site - several documents are provided for the interested reader to see just what a bunch of shits AM Lawyer are. The firm "refuses to be bullied" by the publication, which only promotes its rankings "to sell more magazines " (duh...) and which refused to publish a Dentons ad which lambasted it (double duh...).
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Ads promoting the site were taken out this week in the legal press. It's hard to see the enterprise as anything other than an expensive and very public embarrassment which has given the matter an unnecessary amount of airtime. Dentons might have, more sensibly, just ignored it. Or published its figures like absolutely everyone else.
A spokeswoman for Dentons said that the firm had no further comment to make.