The Top 20 Most Profitable Law Firms (2025)

This post is sponsored by Burford Capital helps companies and law firms unlock the value of their legal assets. With a portfolio of over $7 billion and listings on the NYSE and LSE, Burford provides capital to finance high-value commercial litigation and arbitration—without adding cost or risk or giving up control. Clients include Fortune 500 companies and Am Law 100 firms, who turn to Burford to pursue strong claims, manage legal costs and accelerate recoveries. Learn more at burfordcapital.com . When I recently mentioned the compensation paid to the most coveted lateral partners, some readers—especially the older ones, who recall when $6 million was at or near the top of the market , circa 20 years ago—were incredulous. Is it really true that Jeff Wall, SCOTUS advocate extraordinaire, is getting $15 million a year from Gibson Dunn, as reported by The Wall Street Journal (gift link)? Or that some Biglaw partners earn as much as $40 million a year, according to Law360 and Law.com ? Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. And he comes down the chimneys of partners with giant bags full of cash. And Santa Claus, whom I’m playfully invoking because of the famous quotation , isn’t the right comparison. Santa brings gifts ; partner compensation is earned . As David Boies once told me —speaking about associate bonuses, but the same point applies to partner pay—“law firms are not eleemosynary institutions.” They pay high compensation, to associates and partners alike, because it’s in their self-interest. Some senior readers who were skeptical of huge pay packages invoked Dewey & LeBoeuf—which doled out crazy compensation, to both lateral and homegrown partners, before collapsing and filing for bankruptcy in 2012. They asked: Dewey now have a bubble in partner pay on our hands? There’s no doubt that some individual partners are overpaid. If an expensive lateral hire leaves a firm after only two or three years, sometimes it’s because they had guaranteed comp for a certain period, the guarantee ran out, and their pay was set to drop (because they’re not generating enough revenue at their new firm to justify their desired pay under the firm’s standard comp system). But I wouldn’t say there’s a partner-pay bubble overall. Unlike Dewey, many if not most high-paying firms have the financial wherewithal to be offering what they’re offering. And, in fact, these firms need to compensate partners at these levels, to secure the talent they need to stay competitive. And what’s my basis for saying this? The 2026 Am Law 100 rankings , published earlier this month by The American Lawyer. The rankings and their supporting data show that elite firms are doing quite well for themselves, thank you very much. So these firms are investing in their futures by onboarding more and more superstars, which creates a virtuous cycle: great lateral hires increase firm profitability, enabling the firms that excel at it to use their higher profitability and growing war chests to attract even more top talent. Let’s start with the big picture for Biglaw, reflected in certain key metrics (based on firms’ financial performances in calendar year 2025): Total gross revenue: $178.95 billion, up 13.0% Revenue per lawyer (RPL): $1.39 million, up 8.7% Profits per equity partner (PEP): $3.59 million, up 14.0% No, these numbers aren’t adjusted for inflation. But with inflation at around 2.7% in 2025, Biglaw beat it by a multiple of three to five. And how did 2025 stack up compared to recent years? Here’s some data: In his analysis of the latest rankings, Patrick Smith of The American Lawyer accurately observed that “Am Law 100 firms, for the most part, reproduced their stellar year from 2024.” And that’s nothing to complain about, since 2024 was the best year for Biglaw since the banner year of 2021 (when the industry was bouncing back from the short, but deep, pandemic-induced recession). One metric where 2024 outpaced 2025 was headcount. In 2024, the attorney population of the Am Law 100 grew by 7.7%; in 2025, headcount grew at around half that pace, by 4%. (In case you’re curious, it’s now at 128,868 attorneys—a reminder that even if Biglaw dominates the pages of Original Jurisdiction, its lawyers account for a small share of America’s 1.4 million lawyers .) Not all Biglaw attorney populations grew at the same rate—and the differing rates help explain the growth in profits per equity partner. The ranks of nonequity partners increased by almost 7%, while the number of equity partners grew by only 2%. The overall headcount growth of 4% is a blend of the growth rates of equity partners, nonequity partners, and associates. Because overall headcount grew by 4% but the number of equity partners grew by only 2%, leverage—defined as the ratio of (1) lawyers who aren’t equity partners to (2) equity partners—increased as well. And increased leverage generally means increased profits per equity partner, because the profit generated by each lawyer who’s not an equity partner winds up in the pockets of the equity partners. Up until now, we’ve been discussing the collective performance of Biglaw, which conceals a fair amount of variation. Now let’s look at how individual firms fared, in terms of gross revenue, revenue per lawyer, and profits per equity partner—and maybe gossip a bit about what some of the numbers say about different firms. And yes, I will explain how firms get to $30 million and $40 million partner paydays….Read More