Norma Harris -

Pallas Partners Blows Up Cravath-Scale Bonuses in 2025 Bonus Wars

Pallas Partners Outpaced Biglaw Bonus Scales Norma Harris Pallas Partners, the transatlantic litigation boutique headed by power lawyer Natasha Harrison, that’s been quietly building a reputation with elite hires on both sides of the Atlantic has just dropped a compensation grenade into Big Law’s year-end bonus melee. The firm’s associates and counsel will receive total

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Women Now run Big Law’s $3 Billion Elite

Big Law, Headlining / December 13, 2025

Why Female Law Firm Leaders Are Changing the Business of Law Norma Harris, Lawfuel writer Women now lead an unprecedented slice of Big Law. The club is still small but it is richer, louder and far more important than most firms care to admit. In 2014 a handful of women who ran some of the

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America’s Lawyer Numbers Grow – Crowded, Ageing and About to Get Weirder

Featured, Lawyers, US Law / December 9, 2025

The US Attorney Count Grow Norma Harris The United States now has more practising lawyers than at any point in history. According to the American Bar Association’s latest national survey, there were 1,322,649 active lawyers as of January 1, 2024. The head-count keeps rising. The profession keeps sprawling. And the competition keeps getting nastier. New

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Saunas, Salons and 2,000 Hours – Inside Big Law’s ‘Wellness’ Arms Race

Big Law, Headlining / December 2, 2025

Big Law Perks - Arms race for the best benefits - LawFuel

Law firms aren’t just trying to out‑pay each other anymore – they’re now in an amenities arms race, turning offices into luxury wellness bunkers so lawyers can bill 80 hours a week and still get their steps in, their hair done and their chakras aligned.

The money is still obscene, but the new game is: who can make the golden handcuffs feel most like a spa bracelet.

Newly qualified lawyers in London are now pulling up to around £180,000 in their mid‑20s, with top partners into the multi‑million‑dollar level, but the issue for law firms once everyone is paying nose-bleed money is to be the differentiator. Log in to read more . . .

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What Reddit BigLaw Readers Are Really Worried About

Featured, Lawyers, US Law / November 26, 2025

r/biglaw - reddit trending topics on LawFuel

The r/biglaw trends worrying lawyers Norma Harris Law firms love glossy annual reports full of “strategic realignments,” “market headwinds,” and whatever other euphemism the managing partner’s ghost-writer cooked up. Reddit’s legal communities, by contrast, tell you what’s actually happening and we wanted to know. r/biglaw, r/LawSchool, and the lawyer-adjacent subs have become a running diagnostic

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Will The Four Day Work Week Be The New Big Law Norm?

Featured, Law Firms, US Law / November 15, 2025

four day work week the new norm at law firms - lawfuel

Four Day Work At Big Law Norma Harris, contributing writer A wave of top U.S. law firms has shifted their office attendance policies and now mandate attorneys to work in the office four days per week, reflecting a major strategy change in post-pandemic legal practice. The return-to-office push is creating some major changes in the

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Who Is Trump’s ‘BBC Attorney’ Alejandro Brito?

Featured, LawStars, US Law / November 12, 2025

Trump’s Media Law Hit Man Alejandro “Alex” Brito has emerged as one of the most signifcant litigators in America right now due to his track record of representing President Donald Trump in his fight against media outlets like – most recently – the defamation claim against the BBC. The Miami-born trial lawyer, once known primarily

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Carping at Brad – How Paul Weiss’s Chairman Got Pro Bono Heckles

Big Law, Featured, US Law / November 10, 2025

The Paul Weiss Heckle Evening Brad Karp, chairman of Paul Weiss, found himself on the business end of vocal hecklers during the New York Bar Foundation gala as he valiantly defended his firm’s pro bono track record after the firm agreed to represent Donald Trump. The evening, intended to honor a Paul Weiss partner, quickly

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Etiquette 101 for Kirkland & Ellis – How to Say Please

Big Law, Headlining / November 1, 2025

Training Kirkland & Ellis lawyers - LawFuel

Kirkland & Ellis and the Fine Art of Saying Sorry Without Saying Sorry Norma Harris, LawFuel contributor The planet’s most profitable law firm, Kirkland and Ellis, has decided its famously steely negotiation style could do with a coat of polish. The firm, long the darling (and occasional demon) of private equity clients, apparently received the clearest

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What’s Behind The BigLaw Litigation Hiring Surge?

Big Law, Briefings, Headlining / October 30, 2025

BigLaw litigation - growth stats, LawFuel

The masters of the M&A universe are discovering what the rest of us have known all along – that litigation pays, and it doesn’t evaporate when the dealmakers take a sabbatical.

Fresh data from Bloomberg Law reveals that some of the legal industry’s most ludicrously profitable firms, the ones that built fortunes advising private equity titans, are now scrambling to stockpile litigators like they’re preparing for the apocalypse.

Four heavyweights – Kirkland & Ellis, Paul Weiss, Davis Polk, and Paul Hastings – have inflated their litigation benches by at least 22 percnt since early 2024. It is noteworthy that these are firms that climbed to the top of the profitability charts primarily by perfecting the art of billing seven figures for corporate transactions, not courtroom combat.

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