Revenue:Revenue of approximately $1.2 billion in 2024, up around 9% on the prior year. Profits per partner rose more than 13% to $6.85 million. Mayer Brown For a firm of fewer than 500 lawyers, revenue of $1.2 billion represents revenue per lawyer of approximately $2.4 million — among the very highest in the profession globally. PEP of $6.85 million places Cravath 9th globally above firms many times its size. The firm recently introduced a non-equity partnership tier and moved from a pure lockstep to a hybrid partner compensation model — a significant shift from a firm whose name has been synonymous with lockstep for over a century — in order to remain competitive in retaining top performers.
NQ Salary:Cravath is the firm that sets the salary benchmark for the entire BigLaw industry. Associates in New York are paid on a base salary scale ranging from $225,000 to $420,000, depending on seniority, with discretionary year-end bonuses on top. Cravath The current scale, confirmed in November 2023, runs from $225,000 at NQ to $235,000 (Year 2), $260,000 (Year 3), rising to $420,000 and $435,000 for seventh and eighth years respectively. Legal 500 Year-end bonuses add $20,000 to $115,000 depending on class year, plus special bonuses in strong years. London associates are paid on equivalent dollar-converted terms. When Cravath announces its year-end bonuses — almost always on a Monday in late November or December following the firm's standing weekly partner meeting — the rest of BigLaw watches and typically matches within days
Global Spread / Office Footprint:Three offices only: New York (headquarters), London (opened 1973), and Washington DC (opened 2022).
The deliberate restraint is the point. While competitors have expanded to dozens of offices across multiple continents, Cravath has chosen depth over breadth — maintaining a highly integrated, single-culture firm where every partner knows every other. The Washington DC office focuses on high-stakes regulatory, enforcement, compliance and investigations work, bringing deep government experience to bear for clients across industries.
The London office, with a few dozen lawyers, handles cross-border M&A, capital markets and finance work for major international clients including, historically, HM Treasury, Barclays and Santander. The firm's client relationships are among the longest in the profession — some current client relationships began in the 1800s, including with JPMorgan, CBS and PricewaterhouseCoopers
Prestige / Market Tier:BigLaw Elite
Tier 1 Strengths:Corporate M&A (including hostile takeovers and activist defence), capital markets, litigation, banking and finance
Associate Salary Progression
Tier:Tier 1 – Top Market
Culture / Work Environment
Snapshot:Cravath is the template against which all other elite law firm cultures are measured — and it is meaningfully different from the high-billing, individualistic model that characterises many of its rivals. The rotation system fosters collaboration and eliminates the need for associates to compete for work, clients, training or bonuses. Cravath The firm's modified lockstep means partners are rewarded for collective success rather than individual rainmaking, which produces a notably less political internal environment than eat-what-you-kill competitors.
The trade-off — and the tension that has caused some partner departures — is that truly exceptional individual performers have historically earned less at Cravath than they could command elsewhere.
The recent shift to a hybrid compensation model is an acknowledgement that this trade-off has become harder to sustain in a market where Kirkland pays its top partners $20 million or more. But the core Cravath identity — quality over volume, depth over breadth, institution over individual — remains intact, and for lawyers who want to work at the most historically significant firm in the American legal tradition, that continues to be a compelling proposition
Last Updated: March 21, 2026
