Missouri’s Top 20 Law Firms: McDowell Rice Smith & Buchanan

Most Equitably Structured Midsize Firm

Kansas City-based McDowell Rice Smith & Buchanan generally has between 25 and 30 attorneys on its roster. Almost all of them are equity partners.

It’s a deliberate choice by a firm that takes an unusual approach to its commercial and business cases. Most matters are handled throughout the litigation and appellate process by a single lawyer or two rather than a large team.

It’s a model that has persisted for more than 30 years, according to longtime firm chairman R. Pete Smith. As he told Missouri Lawyers Media for a 2015 article, eschewing the “pyramid” model encourages partners to work harder and better and to focus on the quality of their work.

“Having more powerful lawyers eliminates the need for so many lawyers,” he wrote at the time.

According to the MOney 2021, the most recent to feature McDowell Rice, the firm had $10.5 million in revenue in 2020, though that was an unusually low figure driven by the pandemic. Over the prior decade, the firm’s annual revenues have often swung by as much as 20 percent year to year.  Yet profit margins are consistently 60 percent or higher.