For the second year in a row Dentons has kicked off another fantastically entertaining - and very public - spat with American Lawyer Magazine.

Last year the firm announced that it wouldn't publish its global profits per equity partner figure. It said that any such figure would be meaningless given that Dentons operates a verein structure in both emerging and mature markets. AM Lawyer pointed out that other firms operate the same structure in the same markets and provide their figures, and claimed that Dentons' reticence was simply down to the fact that its results were pisspoor. So it had a stab at coming up with them anyway.

 

Dentons went mental. Open letters were written, huffy statements were published claiming that the editor of AM Lawyer couldn't count. But AM Lawyer clearly found its bovvered bag empty, because it did the same thing again on Monday. Dentons may have trumpeted its fantastic year in the US, it said, but by AM Lawyer's maths the firm's global PEP figure was $495,000. Which is 10% down on last year, and at the arse end of the top 100 firms.

Again, the firm went ballistic. Mike McNamara, US Managing Partner, sent out a "correction demand" on Tuesday saying that AM Lawyer's methodology was "mystefying" and that it had "created" numbers that were "clearly false". Although he refused to provide the correct ones. AM Lawyer said it stood by its figures. The rest of the market is cracking out the popcorn and waiting for another ill-tempered open letter to be sent out. Watch this space.

McNamara yesterday. How it might have looked.

Insiders say that this petulant stance is likely to have come directly from Jelliott, the pet name given to Chairman Joe Andrew and Chief Exec Elliott Portnoy. The pair has generally run the firm with great effect - it has recently become the largest in the world with its Chinese merger, profits are increasing and it's got its name back. But a playground strop over its figures seems a bizarre strategy.

A spokeswoman for the firm declined to comment.