The global elite. Every law firm wants to be in it, but few can define it.
Most law firm leaders agree a breakaway group of firms will dominate the global market in the years to come—firms with large revenues and international capability combined with leading reputations, key client relationships and high profits. But that is where the consensus ends. The criteria seems to shift depending on who it suits.
Law.com
decided to take a more empirical approach.
Taking the latest Global 200 numbers, Law.com‘s intelligence department analysed various aspects of firm performance, including: revenue, total lawyers, revenue per lawyer, profit per lawyer, profit per equity partner, the number of countries a firm operates in, and the distribution of those lawyers across the world.
Scale, Size and Reach
The most obvious starting point is to look at which firms have global scale, size and reach. The strength of having a big balance sheet allows them to invest in technology and to poach and reward the best talent as well as making them less reliant on any one sector or geography. It also enables firms to offer services to clients wherever they need advice.
This isn’t just about revenue and the number of lawyers a firm has, although both are valid measures, it is also about the number of countries in which a firm operates and where those lawyers are based: by this measure, the world’s largest firm by revenue, Kirkland & Ellis, ranks below Latham & Watkins, White & Case and A&O Shearman due to its smaller international footprint.
These are the one-stop-shop firms, the institutions that tend to advise clients on almost all matters all over the world. Global firms like Freshfields, Linklaters, Clifford Chance, DLA Piper and Baker McKenzie don’t want to miss out on the action in any key market. Their differentiator is their self-sufficiency, and that their brand is known in every region.
Such scale is crucial for firms that want to be in the global elite, according to Freshfields’ global managing partner Alan Mason.
Alan Mason of Freshfields. Courtesy photo
"We are seeing a bifurcation in the industry where winners take more share. It is never 100% binary but looking at a 'global elite' focuses the mind firmly on which firms are going to come out on top in a disruptive market.
"What's driving the global elite is coming from clients responding to macro trends such as tech regulation, geo-political uncertainty and regulatory burdens. You can be the best lawyer in a particular practice area in one place but that is not enough if you cannot service your clients globally on the most strategic matters for them.
"This was not the case five to 10 years ago. In the past it would have been easier for a firm to team up with another firm. But the world is a more complex place for clients now. It doesn't matter where an issue occurs or on what topic. If it is strategic for your clients, you have to have a top-tier offering in the relevant practice area and country to be able to service your clients’ needs at the highest level.
Profitability and Productivity
“Yes, but…"
Any conversation around defining the global elite elicits that opener at least a few times. The firms that are the reason for “yes, but”—those of limited scale and reach, but of undeniably sterling reputation—can be found in the next ranking. Sterling reputation, it turns out, often manifests in earning power: The firms are profitable and productive.
Leaders of some of the most powerful and top-earning law firms in the world will gush (albeit privately) about roughly 270-lawyer
Wachtell
, reputed for working the biggest M&A deals and the poster child for “yes, but.” It ranks 61st in the latest Global 200 ranking, despite being a fraction of the size of the firms listed around it. It has the highest revenue per lawyer in the First Hundred (compared with “size, scale and reach” performer Dentons).
Sullivan & Cromwell has a proud yet somewhat limited global presence–but with its recent U.K. hires, that could be about to change. We could call that the Paul Weiss method of crashing onto the international scene, but it bears pointing out that Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, for all the waves it has made in London’s private capital market, still doesn’t stack up to other firms when judged more purely on size and scale. Meanwhile, firms like Davis Polk, Simpson Thacher and Paul Hastings showcase very strong financials and undoubtedly have meaningful international strategies, but haven’t achieved the reach of the first group.
There’s also Cravath, a law firm name long synonymous with prestige, which rounds out the top 15 in this subcategory.
And of course, there’s Kirkland–which, despite its size and reach, boasts enviable per-lawyer metrics, including a 2025 Am Law 100-leading PEP north of $9 billion. There are some firms that overlap in these first and second lists.
Global, But Less Profitable
The overlap between the top 15 in each of the above tables is just 40%. So which factor is more important, scale or profitability?
It is clear that some scale almost always accompanies high levels of PEP.
Nine out of 10 of the top 50 highest-ranked firms by PEP have revenues of $1 billion or more. This makes sense given their revenue per lawyer tends to be higher than average and it is relatively easy for them to expand by bringing in rainmaking laterals.
High PEP typically accompanies scale as well.
If you are a law firm with revenues of $2 billion or more, there’s a 75% chance that you will also be in the top 50 firms by PEP.
While some firms, such as the elite Manhattan firms, post high levels of profitability despite relatively small size, there are no firms with revenue of $3 billion or more that have PEP of less than $2 million. Almost all of those 11 ultra-large firms are in the top half of the Global 100 PEP rankings. It stands to reason that large firms might be profitable given their cross-selling ability to clients, their strong international brands, and their ability to easily cover costs.
That said, scale alone doesn’t ensure high levels of profitability. In fact, some firms—especially those that operate as vereins—could be accused of aiming for scale at the expense of profit. The firms with the biggest gap between their scale score and their profit score are in this chart. It is led by firms including Dentons, CMS and Clyde & Co, and also features Chinese firms China Commercial Law Firm and Yingke.
Some firms in this list defend their position, saying that comprehensive client coverage is the most important factor.
Justin D’Agostino, CEO of Herbert Smith Freehills Kramer, said the ingredients of a global elite firm were to have a good geographic balance with top quality transaction and disputes teams in the major financial centres, as well as top clients in the most important sectors, such as energy, technology and private capital.
“Our model is to be in places where our clients need us,” he said, adding the global PEP numbers can be a “red herring”.
“If we are in places that are not as profitable as New York we are not going to generate those levels of profitability, but people get distracted by that - that’s not the measure.
“Clients want global reach. They need us to be leading in each market and to be comprehensive.”
Profitable, But Less Global
Other firms could be accused of going to the other extreme, where they have sacrificed international capability for the sake of keeping profits high.
Some say that having scale ultimately helps increase PEP because the top rainmakers can be hired and retained by channeling portions of a larger profit pool to where it needs to go. And it is true that over a five-year period the average revenue and PEP growth rate of many of the firms in the next table has lagged their competitors.
But the most profitable firms remain the best regarded and some, such as Wachtell and Cravath, continue to defy the notion that full service international capability is necessary to compete at the highest level.
Supporters of this model point out that so long as they can justify the highest client fees and therefore generate the highest PEP it will remain hard to talk about an elite group of firms without considering them.
Fried Frank, along with the aforementioned Wachtell and Cravath, could be seen as a testament to the earning power of New York pedigrees–a pedigree shared by many, including Sullivan & Cromwell and Paul Weiss, as well as Debevoise, Davis Polk and Proskauer. Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom and Milbank, too, though they are more scaled-up than the ones listed below, can claim this lineage. These are firms that have been rooted in the world’s financial center since before that was an articulated strategy.
Built on a foundation of advising financial institutions, or blue-chip corporations in traditional M&A, these firms might be excused for believing that forays into foreign markets seem needlessly risky. Most of these firms have done so but only to a lesser extent.
Along with globalization, these firms have also had to navigate the imperative of growing their portfolio of private capital work. Some critics would say many of them have been too slow to adapt. Each is a form of adaptation, and each is important, when we talk about who comprises the global elite in 2025 and beyond.
New York is not the only “pedigree” approach evident here. Fenwick’s roots are geographically distant from New York, but Silicon Valley has certainly proven to be fertile ground for firms leveraging work in technology, venture capital and related practices. Much like Wall Street, Silicon Valley is arguably a strategy unto itself.
Vinson & Elkins is another example: It is known for growing upon a foundation of oil-and-gas work from its Houston roots, though it has fought hard to stake a claim in New York, as some other Texas firms have done.
As for Britain’s Slaughter and May, there are
open questions
as to whether the firm has adapted sufficiently to meet the times. To be fair, that’s a balancing act that any firm on this list must attempt to pull off.
Double down on what’s generated enviable profitability generation after generation, or risk branching into new geographies or lines of work?
The Combined Ranking
So which firms have managed to combine scale and profit?
The list below—combining the best firms for scale, size and reach, along with profitability and productivity—is hard to argue with when trying to name the global elite. Some will say there are key omissions—after all, this list represents just 7.5% of the Global 200 overall. But few would deny the 15 firms listed deserve their place.
Latham and Kirkland are the clear market leaders globally on most fronts, while the likes of Skadden, White & Case, A&O Shearman and Freshfields have the heft and diversity to get into the top grouping.
Gibson Dunn & Crutcher, Sidley Austin, Ropes & Gray, Paul Hastings, Paul Weiss and King & Spalding are among the fastest growing firms for both revenue and PEP. And Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, Simpson Thacher & Bartlett and Davis Polk & Wardwell have the profits and reputation to make the list despite their less comprehensive international operations.
This list does not show trajectory, of course. Some firms, such as A&O Shearman, do not appear to be improving their PEP numbers, given the PEP in its first year since merging was lower than that of the legacy firms.
And some important absentees do stand out, ones which will have hopes of making the list in the coming years.
Large verein firms such as DLA Piper and Baker McKenzie are well recognised global legal brands. But their lower profitability levels have them ranked outside the top 15.
Similarly, the illustrious Manhattan trio of Cravath Swaine & Moore, Wachtell Lipton Rosen & Katz and Sullivan & Cromwell scored very poorly for scale and global reach despite their great profit numbers.
The more controversial omissions are the likes of Weil Gotshal & Manges, Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton, Milbank, Linklaters, Clifford Chance and Hogan Lovells. All were close to making the top 15 but missed out for various reasons.
Weil Gotshal and Cleary are each fairly strong in both scale and profitability, but fail to make the top 15 of either.
Milbank is slightly more profitable but not global enough. Linklaters and Clifford Chance’s relatively small U.S. operations mean they struggle to generate the profits required to make the list. Hogan Lovells also falls down on profitability.
It might seem like achieving global elite status is, in some ways, happenstance. Pursue and achieve general excellence, galvanize your firm’s reputation by consistently delivering, and wait for the distinction to be foisted upon you, the thinking might go.
Leaders of some of these firms, however, say getting into the elite conversation, and having the sorts of data to back it up, is hardly accidental.
Yvette Ostolaza, management committee chair at Sidley. Courtesy photo.
Being in financial centers is something Sidley is “hyperfocused on,” said the firm's management committee chair Yvette Ostolaza, speaking about what it means to be considered among the global elite.
“For us it means having the scale and a global reach to serve clients across practices and regions while providing capabilities that most other firms cannot,” she said. “It also means having the infrastructure and a culture of collaboration to fully utilize that scale, rather than having a franchise approach. It also means attracting the top talent.
”There are firms that are definitely in more locations than we are—that is not the strategy that Sidley has,” she said, but added that “the world where you can be in just one area geographically and serve premier clients [is] not feasible going forward to be part of the global elite.”
Julie Jones, chair of Ropes & Gray, agreed on the importance of international reach "to be where our clients need us most and where we believe we can offer unique value and insights to them.”
But she added: “Even as our size and footprint have grown, we remain devoted to acting as one firm globally, allowing us to deliver the firm’s very best talent to every client interaction."
Meanwhile, Barbara Becker, chair and managing partner of Gibson Dunn, said there was "tremendous momentum" behind the firm's global strategy.
“We are investing in our destination practices around the world and expanding our platform in key financial centers. Above all, we are always guided by our North Star: seamless collaboration and a relentless commitment to excellence in everything we do—those guideposts enable us to deliver superior results for our clients in their most complex disputes and transformative transactions.”
Methodology
In order to calculate the Global Elite rankings, each firm in the 2025 Global 100 (top 100 firms by revenue) were assigned scores (1-100) for their FY 2024 financial and headcount metrics based on their rankings within each individual category, with 100 being given to the top-performing firm, down to 1 to the bottom-performing firm.
These metrics were: Revenue; Total Lawyers; Revenue per lawyer (RPL); Profit per Equity Partner (PEP); Profit per Lawyer (PPL); Global Scale (# of countries in which a firm has an office); Lawyer distribution (based on the percentage of lawyers in the headquartered country).
With scores assigned for each metric, the average of the seven figures was taken to calculate the Overall Global Elite Score, which showcases the firms with distinction across profitability, productivity, size, scale, and global reach.
For the Size, Scale, and Reach ranking: There was greater emphasis and weighting on revenue generation, total lawyers, global scale and reach, and lawyer distribution scores.
For the Profitability & Productivity ranking: Independent of the number of total lawyers at a firm or how distributed they are globally, this ranking placed greater emphasis and weighting on RPL, PEP, and PPL performance.
Research by Daniel Masopust.
Sep 18
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