US Law -

Big Law’s Hiring Boom – Am Law 200 Firms Snapped Up 20% More Lateral Partners in 2025

Big Law, Briefings, US Law / March 5, 2026

The lateral partner market didn’t just heat up in 2025 but it ran hot. New data from Law.com Compass shows that Am Law 200 firms hired 4,152 lateral partners in the 12 months ending September 30, 2025, up from 3,473 the prior year.

That’s a nearly 20% jump — a sharp contrast to the modest 3.7% increase recorded the year before in the lateral hiring report.

The numbers tell a story of a legal industry that has found its footing again, and firms that are spending aggressively to prove it.

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Macfarlanes’ Curious New York Move: A Manhattan Office With No U.S. Law

Headlining, Power Firms, US Law / March 5, 2026

Macfarlanes Opens Manhattan Office – With a Deliberately Limited Mission Macfarlanes is joining the steady procession of London firms establishing a presence in New York. But unlike the usual BigLaw expansion playbook, the firm insists it has no intention of practising U.S. law. Instead, the profile City firm is opening what it calls a “representative

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Lawyers Just Jacked Their Hourly Billing Rates to $3,400 — and Clients Are Saying “Thanks, That’ll Do Nicely”

Briefings, Law Firm Management, Law Firms, US Law / February 24, 2026

You know that moment when a client looks at a bill and just… nods? Christopher Clark, a litigator at a boutique law firm, got one of those last year, the WSJ reported. He’d hiked his rate to a once-absurd $3,000 an hour. The client’s reply? “Congratulations. That’s the highest we’ve seen.”

A year earlier, $2,500 felt like the ceiling. Now it looks almost cute.

According to Persuit’s latest billing data, senior partners at the biggest 50 firms pushed rates up an average 16% in 2025. Some are now openly quoting $3,400 an hour. And that’s before you get to the real outliers.

In bankruptcy filings, Latham & Watkins and Kirkland & Ellis have partners clearing the $3,000 mark this year. Reuters reported in January that Susman Godfrey’s Bill Carmody and Neal Manne quietly set their 2026 rack rate at $4,000 an hour — up from $3,000 last year. (Lawfuel broke the same story and called it “Four Thousand an Hour Arrives in US Big Law Billing.”)

Lawyers Just Jacked Their Hourly Billing Rates to $3,400 — and Clients Are Saying “Thanks, That’ll Do Nicely” Read More »

Linklaters Continues US Expansion With New Office

Big Law, Featured, US Law / February 18, 2026

Linklaters continues its aggressive U.S. expansion, highlighted by the recent February 2026 lease of an additional 48,000 square feet at 1290 Avenue of the Americas in New York, following a 6,500 square foot addition in October 2025, pushing total NY space beyond 150,000 square feet at approximately $100 per square foot. This move, driven by

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How Brad Karp Lost the Plot: David Lat’s Forensic Dissection of the Paul Weiss Chairman’s Downfall

Headlining, LawStars, Lawyers, US Law / February 16, 2026

BigLaw • Analysis The Karp Collapse: David Lat Dissects the Emails That Ended an Era at Paul Weiss Five takeaways from Brad Karp’s Epstein correspondence—and what BigLaw should learn from this masterclass in how not to manage a client relationship By LawFuel Staff • February 16, 2026 When the DOJ released millions of Jeffrey Epstein

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Legal Market Analysis – BigLaw’s Lateral Frenzy Is Reshaping the Market

Big Law, Headlining, US Law / February 16, 2026

The Perkins Coie exodus in Seattle signals a permanent shift in the lateral hiring labor market that is changing the way top law firms operate. Lateral hiring is no longer just a tactic but an entire business model.

When Perkins Coie lost lawyers to the announcement new offices for Morrison Foerster and McGuireWoods. It was in fact a signal of something structural.

The departures came as Perkins Coie prepares for its merger with Ashurst, a combination that will create a global platform of roughly 3,000 lawyers. The timing reveals a pattern that now defines elite legal practice: mergers create opportunity, but they also create instability. And instability is oxygen for competitors.

What we are witnessing is not a phase. It is the emergence of lateral acquisition as BigLaw’s dominant growth strategy.

The New Economics: Why Firms Are Buying Revenue

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Women In Law Firm Leadership: The Stubborn 20% Ceiling That Won’t Crack

Briefings, Featured, Lawyers, Power Law, US Law / February 13, 2026

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:

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BigLaw vs In-House Counsel Salaries 2026: The $75K Gap Driving Legal Talent Crisis

Big Law, Career Advice, Law Job News, Lawyers, US Law / February 9, 2026

Let’s cut the corporate speak: your legal department is bleeding talent, and pretending it’s just about billable hours versus work-life balance isn’t going to stop the hemorrhage.

Here’s what’s really happening in Q1 2026; and if you’re a General Counsel, CLO, or corporate counsel, you need to pay attention because the landscape just shifted beneath your Italian loafers.

LawFuel took a look at recruitment strategies for in-house counsel and what recruiters and corporates can do to attract in-house legal talent in the face of BigLaw’s big money advantage.

What Is the Current Salary Gap Between BigLaw and In-House Counsel?

First-year BigLaw associates are now pulling in $240,000. Read that again. First. Year. Meanwhile, your mid-level in-house counsel with five years of actual business experience, the one who just negotiated that complex vendor agreement and actually understands your company’s risk tolerance, is making $175,000. Maybe $185,000 if they negotiated hard.
Log in to read . . .

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Kirkland Loses Elite Energy Makers as Paul Weiss Goes on Offense

Big Law, Featured, US Law / February 8, 2026

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

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Brad Karp’s Paul Weiss Exit – When ‘Once in a Lifetime’ Evenings Come Back to Haunt You

Headlining, Lawyers, US Law / February 6, 2026

Brad Karp’s 18-year reign atop Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison ended Wednesday night not with a bang, but with a carefully worded statement about “distractions.” Translation: the Justice Department’s release of millions of Epstein-related documents last week made his position untenable faster than you can say “conflict of interest.”

The emails paint a picture that’s more uncomfortable than a BigLaw associate’s billable hours target. In July 2015, Karp thanked Epstein for “an evening I’ll never forget,” describing it as “truly ‘once in a lifetime’ in every way, though I hope to be invited again.” Epstein’s response? A promise of “many many nights of unique talents” and assurances Karp would “be invited often.”

Spoiler alert: those invitations are now exhibit A in why being Chair of a white-shoe law firm and socialising with convicted sex offenders don’t mix well.

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