Another thing interesting about Wolfram and Hart is that they take a more indirect approach to accomplishing their ambitions. All the other major villains we see on Buffy and Angel (at least on the television shows) get more or less directly involved in their plans, or at least mean to.
We know that the W&H demons were really old because Illyria knows about them. Although I think she calls them kinda weak/pathetic pack in her day when she gets all misty-eyed and reminiscing.
These demons were present at the dawn of humanity, and at the time of the Old Ones. According to what was said by Illyria were not very strong, a little more than a vampire, but fled to other dimensions after the expulsion of the Old Ones from the earth, have gained power, whose source is the home office, that is the evil residing in all living beings on earth.
I bring up the difference in how the Wolfram and Hart indirectly approach accomplishing their ambitions versus the direct and involved approach of most of the other villains on the shows because this difference might be illustrative (in a small way maybe) of why Wolfram and Hart have been so successful, and why they have lasting power when so many others do not. And also to point out and say that power isn't everything. Glory was a goddess from a hell dimension, an extremely powerful being, even in corporeal form, but she was also rather stupid on some things, and had other handicaps like vanity, hubris, narcissism, and more. When I think about Glory, I see that her enormous power on her hell plane as a Goddess might possibly have been her downfall in the end, because when you possess enormous quantities of power you are never challenged to conceive of other ways to accomplish your goals, because the direct route (the direct application of force) is almost always sufficient to succeed. Until the day comes when you have to find a different and more subtle way to win. Extremely powerful beings have excessive power to fall back on, but on the other hand, they are unlikely to think of or embrace alternative and less direct/forceful solutions when those occasional situations arise. And on top of that, enormous power does not encourage that being to address any potentially fatal personal flaws. Consider Glory again: it seems very likely to me that her extreme vanity, hubris, narcissism and more were a result of having so much power for so long...and the fact that she was incapable of recognizing these flaws as part of her ultimate downfall was a result of being used to having so much power that her flaws didn't matter and were not an issue. Back in her hell dimension this all might have been fine, but in corporeal form on Earth, those flaws became handicaps contributing to her ultimate downfall.
So maybe in the long run it was much better for Wolfram and Hart to have started out rather weak demons. Weaker beings have to learn other methods to succeed. I imagine the very early forms of the wolf, ram and hart had a lot of intelligence, guile and patience as a matter of necessity, (which allowed them to survive beyond other less capable weaker demons of their time) and over the millennia they have not overplayed their hands, allowing them to develop their power gradually to the point that they are now possibly as powerful as some of the old ones might have been in the ancient days. But since they developed from humble starting points, they might be in the best position to succeed in the long run. Maybe?
