The big news for Bingham McCutchen over the past 12 months was its March 2006 merger with Washington DC firm Swidler Berlin, the sixth merger Bingham has successfully completed in nine years.

There was some fallout from the deal, although Jay Zimmerman retained top job as managing partner. However, 10 Swindler partners left to join Orrick Herrington & Sutcliffe and 12 went to Heller Ehrman because of conflicts of interest.

Although the 2005 financials showed a paltry 4.5 per cent growth in turnover on 2004 to £325.8m ($592.9m), expect a big jump up the table next year due to the merger, which created a 950-lawyer firm with a revenue of $700m (£384.6m).

For 2005 however, the small top-line growth was a weak enough performance to see it drop two places on last year.

The merger with Swidler will have strengthened Bingham's DC presence, and the 175-lawyer office is now the second-biggest in the firm. But in addition to the Swidler lawyers, Bingham made some choice lateral partner hires, particularly in finance, which still accounts for 28 per cent of the firm's revenue. The hires included Morrison & Foerster's (MoFo) head of financial transactions, Mark Joachim, who joined in February 2006, bringing two partners with him.

The other area that has been beefed up is securities litigation. Shortly after the MoFo raid, three new securities litigation partners joined the Orange County office, and Northern California's outgoing chief of securities fraud, Haywood Gilliam also came on board. Sensibly, the firm has since launched a stock-option task force.

The firm is still very much US-centric; its international offices are limited to London and Tokyo. While the 36-lawyer London office had a storming year, with a 33 per cent rise in turnover to £13.4m ($24.4m), Tokyo is limited to two partners and an associate. It needs more depth if it is to compete with US rivals out there.

• The Top 100: 26-50