If you’re a lawyer watching your firm’s P&L or thinking about the next tech upgrade, here’s the headline you can’t ignore: private equity poured a record £534 million into UK law firms in 2024, which is a chunky 42% jump from £377m the year before. Over the past five years that’s more than £1.2 billion of fresh capital heading into the sector.
Record £534m PE Cash Floods UK Law Firms With AI As the Rocket Fuel Read More »
At least fifteen Am Law 100 firms are dangling sums of up to $50,000 at first-year law students who haven’t yet sat their first exams. The stated purpose is public service. The real purpose is something else entirely. LawFuel Staff· – March 30, 2026 · Law Firm Recruiting There’s a talent war going on in
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Three days after he stepped back onto a competitive golf course for the first time in nearly two years, Tiger Woods was in handcuffs. On Friday afternoon, just before 2 p.m., the most recognisable golfer on the planet climbed out of the passenger window of his overturned Range Rover on South Beach Road in Jupiter
The boss of one of the London’s elite insurance law firms has taken the extraordinary step of personally overseeing misconduct complaints after rising allegations of bullying and sexual harassment among senior partners, shining a fresh, unflattering light on law firms’ ongoing struggle to clean up their cultures.
Read more . .
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In the rarefied atmosphere where partners measure success in eight-figure payouts and associates measure it in how many weekends they haven’t seen since the bar exam, one number looms above all others: profit per equity partner, or PEP.
PEP is the metric that makes managing partners beam, headhunters salivate, and mid-level associates stare at their billable hour trackers with a particular brand of existential dread.
The 2026 Am Law 100 rankings — reflecting 2025 fiscal performance — haven’t been formally published yet. But early reports are already in, and if you thought the 2025 numbers were eye-watering, with 4.6 trillion (that’s ‘illion’ with a ‘T’) brace yourself.
Kirkland & Ellis has become the first law firm in history to crack $10 billion in annual revenue, posting $10.56 billion for 2025 — up 20% year-on-year.
PEP at the Chicago colossus hit $11.1 million, also up approximately 20%. Since 2020, Kirkland’s average partner profits have risen 80%. Let that arithmetic sink in for a moment. A Kirkland equity partner today earns roughly what a senior Magic Circle partner in London earns in four years.
The PEP-Talk Numbers
In a bold lateral strike that underscores the fierce talent battle in Paris Big Law, Ropes & Gray has snapped up a high-powered eight-lawyer private equity and M&A group from rival Latham & Watkins.
The move, confirmed by multiple sources including The Lawyer andLaw.com International, brings three partners — Denis Criton, (pictured) Gaëtan Gianasso, and Michael Colle
Ropes & Gray Raids Latham & Watkins for Eight-Lawyer Paris PE/M&A Team Read More »
Prominent Kirkland & Ellis litigator Jay Lefkowitz, the man who led the charge to lock in Jeffrey Epstein’s notorious 2008 Florida non-prosecution agreement, is retiring from the firm after more than 30 years at the powerhouse firm. Lefkowitz, a Columbia Law School grad, Bush White House alum, and longtime senior litigation partner (who also sat
Jay Lefkowitz, Kirkland Partner Who Represented Epstein, to Retire from Firm This Spring Read More »
White & Case has delivered another record-breaking year, posting an 8.5% revenue increase for 2025 to reach $3.6 billion Legal Business — and signalling loudly that this is very much a firm still in growth mode. Profits per equity partner hit an all-time high of $4.41 million, a 10% jump that will keep the partnership
White & Case Hits $3.6bn — And It’s Just Getting Warmed Up Read More »
Kirkland & Ellis just changed the frame for the entire industry
If you write about lawyers for long enough, you make a quiet peace with the gap between your pay packet and theirs. This week, however, Kirkland & Ellis has made that gap feel almost cosmic.
Equity partners at the world’s highest-grossing law firm averaged $11.1 million each for 2025 – a 20% increase on 2024. The major money figure places Kirkland’s partners in the earnings bracket of a top Premier League footballer, at roughly £22,500 a day.
The firm simultaneously became the first law firm in history to break $10 billion in revenue, posting $10.56 billion for the year.
When Weil, Gotshal & Manges announced last week that Ramona Y. Nee will succeed Barry Wolf as Executive Partner from January 2027, the news landed with the quiet inevitability of a deal that everyone saw coming.
Wolf, who has steered the firm for 16 years, called her “uniquely suited.” He was not exaggerating. For nearly a quarter-century Nee has been the quiet engine of Weil’s U.S. private equity practice and the beating heart of its Boston office. Now the firm is handing her the keys.
The Private Equity Lawyer Who Will Run Weil Gotshal Read More »
