The war for legal talent never really ended. It just got more expensive with big law partner pay hitting record levels, but law firm retention bonuses becoming increasingly important as talent retention retains top level importance for law firms. While headline-grabbing salary bumps and biglaw salary information dominate the conversation, the quieter – and often
The legal profession has a mathematics problem. Women now constitute the majority of law school graduates, comprise over half of associates at major firms, and represent 47% of all lawyers globally.
Yet when the elevator reaches the executive floor, the numbers tell a different story: just two in ten law firm leaders are women (although when they do reach the top women legal leaders are making a difference).
The latest research from the International Bar Association’s Raising the Bar: Women in Law project confirms what many practitioners have long suspected – the profession is experiencing a spectacular leakage of female talent somewhere between the mid-career mark and the managing partner’s office.
The Numbers That Should Keep Managing Partners Awake
The IBA’s December 2024 Progress Report, synthesizing data from 11 countries across five continents, reveals the uncomfortable arithmetic:
Women In Law Firm Leadership: The Stubborn 20% Ceiling That Won’t Crack Read More »
Paul Weiss Goes to Houston And The Energy Talent War Just Escalated When Paul Weiss just poached senior energy M&A dealmakers from Kirkland & Ellis and promptly announced a strategic push into Houston, this was not a polite handshake between firms but a major shakeup with weaponized intent. Paul Weiss, fresh from the headline-making resignation
Kirkland Loses Elite Energy Makers as Paul Weiss Goes on Offense Read More »
6 Personal Injury Law Firm Leaders Norma Harris, LawFuel contributing writer America’s fastest‑growing personal injury firms are no longer just winning cases, they’re scaling like growth companies, blending national marketing, AI‑driven operations, and Inc. 5000‑level revenue trajectories in what remains a relatively slow‑growth legal sector. Personal injury remains a solid but unspectacular growth segment, with
The Fastest Growing Personal Injury Law Firms in America Read More »
Gibson Dunn is planting its flag in Spain, and it’s doing it the only way Big Law knows how – by hiring the country’s most decorated dealmaker and building an office around him.
The firm has confirmed that Armando Albarrán, widely regarded as Spain’s premier private equity and M&A lawyer, is joining as a partner, triggering the launch of Gibson Dunn’s Madrid office. It is not a symbolic outpost. This is a full-blooded expansion of the Gibson Dunn’s European transactional machine.
Albarrán arrives with a reputation that does the heavy lifting. He is Band 1 across the board at Chambers for Capital Markets, Corporate/M&A and Private Equity, and has advised on many of Spain’s most consequential domestic and cross-border transactions. Log in to read the story . . .
Gibson Dunn Storms Spain With Star Dealmaker Armando Albarrán to Lead Madrid Launch Read More »
AlphaLit’s seed round is more than another legal tech funding story, but is a shot across the bow of the traditional plaintiffs’ bar and a live case study in how voice AI and claims scoring could rewire the economics of “small” litigation.
For most plaintiffs’ firms, high-volume, lower-dollar matters remain structurally unattractive.
Intake on smaller civil claims is labour-intensive, non-billable, and often delegated to over-stretched staff, which makes it hard to justify the time spent on leads that rarely convert into seven-figure wins.
AlphaLit points to a brutal funnel – roughly 64 percent of calls from potential plaintiffs never get a substantive response, leaving an estimated 55 million meritorious civil claims unfiled each year, particularly in working-class communities.
Inside AlphaLit – The Legal Tech AI Startup Rewiring Legal Intake and Access to Justice Read More »
evolved Law.com from a news site into a unified, mobile‑first legal intelligence portal that connects breaking news, analytics and workflow tools across six core content pillars: Business of Law, Practice of Law, Corporate Legal, Legal Technology, U.S. News and World News.
Behind the front end sits ALM’s wider legal media network (including leading U.S. and global titles) and data products, giving lawyers access to a single environment where media, data and marketing inventory intersect.
At a practical level, Law.com now acts as the entry point to ALM’s broader stack: Law.com Compass (firm and market analytics), Law.com Radar (real‑time case and deal tracking) and client‑facing interfaces like Lawyerpages, the AI‑powered consumer directory.
For law firms, that makes Law.com less a “website to read” and more an infrastructure decision about where you get your data, where you advertise, and where prospective clients and GCs discover your lawyers. And it can be an extremely effective law marketing tool.
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How BigLaw and AI Is Changing the Law Business Norma Harris, LawFuel contributor In December 2025, Cravath once again kicked off a new salary scale for associates, pushing first-year salaries to $225,000, with eighth-years pulling $430,000+. Not to be outdone, Kirkland & Ellis and Latham & Watkins matched within days. And more pay deals occurred,
How BigLaw Salary Wars And AI Are Upending The Legal World Read More »
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
Pallas Partners Blows Up Cravath-Scale Bonuses in 2025 Bonus Wars Read More »
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
